


The Empty Heart

by astudyinrose



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Drug Use, Frottage, Johnlock Fluff, M/M, Mary turns out to be a BAMF, Possessive Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, Terrorists, banter between Sherlock and Mary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinrose/pseuds/astudyinrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months have passed since Sherlock's return, and it still hasn't completely sunk in that John has moved on with his life and is living with Mary. John hasn't quite been able to forgive and forget; he still comes to cases sometimes, but his life no longer revolves around Sherlock. </p><p>One day, Mycroft comes to him with a terrorist case, and Sherlock teams up with the unlikeliest of people to help him solve the case and save a hostage before it's too late...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Burning Fawkes

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a prompt from sherlock-is-a-bamf for "banter between Mary and Sherlock," which obviously evolved into much more. Thanks for the nudge! It was also inspired in part by V for Vendetta. Also, Chapters 1-3 are unbetaed.
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT 1/23/13: Just as a topical note, the first three chapters of this were written and published here before The Empty Hearse aired, so all similarities to the actual episode (with the exception of one edited line in Chapter 3) were before I knew what happened in the episode itself.

Sherlock lay on the couch, watching the afternoon sunlight chase itself across the ceiling. He had no cases left to think about, and he was so bored that he felt like the sheer tedium was starting to seep out of his pores. Not even the violin held any appeal. 

Nothing was the same as when he had left. He’d had an idealized and idiotic notion that John would still be at Baker Street, as if no time had passed at all. Sherlock had imagined him (though he wouldn’t care to admit it) sitting in the kitchen, having just made a pot of tea. John would have gaped in surprise as Sherlock had walked in, smirking, his hands clasped behind his back. He would have smiled at John's shocked expression and said, ‘Any tea left?’

John would have been angry, certainly, but eventually their lives would have gone back to the way they were. Cases, a girlfriend of John’s here or there. But they would still always be Sherlock and John in the end, at 221B. He had never expected the cost of faking his own demise to be so great, nor so permanent. What an utter fool he had been.

The front door rang: a long, sustained note. Too much pressure on the buzzer to be John, and too long to be a client.

 _Mycroft. He usually doesn't bother to ring. Odd_.

Mrs. Hudson answered the door on the third ring. Sherlock simply turned over onto his side, facing the back of the couch. He pulled his knees up to his chest and shut his eyes.

Mycroft’s heavy footsteps started up the stairs ( _has gained 8 pounds since I last saw him, maybe 9_ ), slowing when they reached the landing. 

“I’m glad to see that you’re taking well to living by yourself again,” Mycroft’s dry, sarcastic voice said after a pause, obviously indicating the mess in the flat.

“Sod off, Mycroft.”

“Honestly, I’d forgotten that John had actually kept the flat… well… _cleaner_ , if not clean.”

Sherlock didn’t bother to answer. He just pulled his knees in closer.

He heard a dramatic sigh from behind him. “You are acting like a child whose favorite toy has been stolen, you do realize.”

“I’m fully aware,” Sherlock spat.

Mycroft didn’t rise to the occasion, instead walking over to the fireplace and sitting down in the chair which used to be John’s. It would always be John’s, even though it was only ‘his’ for a couple of years.

 _I’ll probably live here for the rest of my life, with this same furniture, and I will never sit in that chair._  Sherlock’s face twitched ever so slightly. Thankfully, he was still facing the back of the couch.

“He isn’t here anymore. He won’t care if I sit here,” Mycroft said with a hint of exasperation and more than enough smugness.

Sherlock scowled. Apparently, Mycroft’s skills at annoying him to death had now progressed to telepathy, which was rather unfortunate.

They sat this way for several minutes, neither wanting to speak first and give up the high ground. _"The Holmes men are nothing if not stubborn,”_ as Mummy would say. But Mycroft’s presence was far worse than simply being bored; it felt like bugs were crawling beneath his skin. Sherlock felt his resolve crumbling almost immediately.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “Is there a _reason_ for this visit, or did you just come to bore me? If it’s the latter, you are succeeding admirably.”

Though he couldn't see it, Sherlock could practically feel Mycroft’s disgustingly sweet grin from across the room. Sherlock remained completely motionless, staring at a loose thread in the couch cushion as if it had personally insulted him.

“I need you to-”

“No.”

“You don’t even-”

“No.”

Mycroft huffed. “I know that you don’t have any cases on right now. In fact, you haven’t had an interesting one in weeks. It’s hard to get back in the public’s good graces, it seems, when your name has been mud-- even once it’s officially cleared.”

“Irrelevant. I wouldn’t take a case from _you_ if it were the last one on earth.”

Mycroft sighed, finally getting up from the chair-- _John’s_ chair-- with some difficulty (Sherlock adjusted his estimate of Mycroft’s weight gain to eleven pounds) and walked over to the couch. A folder marked “CLASSIFIED, Level 7” appeared in front of his view of the couch back.

“No,” Sherlock repeated, closing his eyes again and rounding his shoulders.  _Go. Away._

Another long, drawn-out sigh. Mycroft shifted slightly on his feet, as if he were contemplating his next move.

“Quetzalcoatl,” Mycroft finally said in an inordinately grim tone. Sherlock froze, his eyes opening slowly. He stared at the file with new venom.

“You can only use that once, you know,” Sherlock said so quietly it was barely a whisper, though he knew Mycroft could hear him.

“It’s merited. I don’t forsee ever needing it more. The wellbeing of the entire country, maybe the world, is at stake.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes at his brother’s hyperbole and finally sat up, taking the file with rather more force than was strictly necessary.

“An attack is coming,” Mycroft said, sitting on the coffee table in front of him. “The terror alert has been raised to critical.”

The tone of his voice finally betrayed his weariness, and Sherlock’s eyes flicked over the rest of his appearance briefly. _He has been up for four-- no, five\-- days._

“It must be dire indeed, to merit the amount of emotional eating you seem to be doing. Careful you don’t cause that table to buckle, it’s my favorite,” Sherlock said smoothly, looking pointedly at anything in the room but his brother and the file.

Mycroft smiled acidly and tapped his umbrella on the edge of the table impatiently to bring Sherlock’s attention back to him. Sherlock cocked his head and stared at him. There was a tightness around his mouth that Sherlock had only observed once, possibly twice, and only in the most dire situations. 

Mycroft rose his eyebrows knowingly and nodded. “Are you starting to understand the gravity of the situation now?”

Sherlock said nothing, instead slowly opening the file. Curiosity was finally getting the best of him.

“Who is it this time?”

Mycroft sighed, closing his eyes in visible relief that Sherlock had finally given in. Sherlock’s gaze slid back up to his brother. Mycroft suddenly seemed… old. _Very_ old.

Mycroft’s eyes flew open under Sherlock’s scrutiny. The tightness around his mouth intensified. “The Ardens Vulpi. We have reason to believe that it will happen soon. Very soon.”

“Oh, you mean the clots at MI6 can’t handle it?” Sherlock sneered.

In lieu of a retort as usual, Mycroft rubbed his eyes with one hand, yet another uncharacteristic gesture. _  
_

“There’s no time, Sherlock. I’ve run out of time. You’re the only one who…” he cleared his throat. “I need your help.”

Sherlock was aghast. Mycroft never let him see this side of him, never usually let a chink in his armor show.  No matter the ‘national crisis,’ he had never admitted that he needed help. It was akin to seeing a dog suddenly decide to juggle while riding a bicycle.

Mycroft stared back for a moment, then nodded again curtly.

“I’ll leave you to it. I have… other matters to attend to. Call if you have any leads.” Mycroft got up, resuming the cold mask of diplomacy he usually held so well, and left.

Sherlock watched his brother retreat down the hallway. Suddenly, the contents of the file were impossible to resist.

He rifled through the myriad sheets of paper. There were maps, names, photos, possible targets. He scanned it all once before he started again from the beginning.

 _The Ardens Vulpi._ Literally translated from latin, it meant “the Burning Fox.” The name of the organization was not altogether unfamiliar to him. They were a reclusive, intellectual group, believing that society had to be cleansed of its ills (that is, the government) in order to return society to its purest form. It was this belief which caused the press to label them as anarchists, but it was a misnomer; in reality, they believed that an ideal government would miraculously take over once the old one had been removed.

But they had always been more philosophical and passive. They were soap box theorists who had gained a small but loyal following. That is, until a new leader had taken over. His name was veiled in mystery, and even Mycroft had been unable to trace him--but he had turned the philosophers into militants.

In the past five years, seven major cities in the world had been targeted by the Vulpi, all government buildings, all random.  And somewhere nearby they had always painted a symbol of a fox curled in a circle, eating its own tail, completely aflame.

Sherlock started tacking the maps and other intelligence information up on the wall. Hours went by, ticking away too quickly.

The Vulpi had no discernible pattern, no particular method of attack. They always targeted buildings of national and government significance. Their aim was not only to cripple the working government but also to crush the morale and trust of its people.

The first attack was in Madrid, in broad daylight. A tour bus slammed into the City Hall and exploded. Another one was in Berlin; the Reichstag had nearly been destroyed by arson. There was usually some kind of diversion, drawing the intelligence force and police to another part of the city before the real attack began.

The chatter was even less helpful. The active Vulpi must have been aware that MI6 was listening, because the language was complete gibberish.

The afternoon had faded into night, and Sherlock still stared at the papers on the walls. He hadn’t eaten or slept in nearly three days, but that wasn’t abnormal. He had about two more days before his hands started shaking. He tried not to think about how John would probably be plying him with toast and tea by now.

Night started lighting back into day. Sounds of life echoed outside, down Baker Street, but Sherlock didn’t notice. 

He did, however, text John.

_Baker Street. Terrorist case. Come at once if convenient. SH_

_It's not. Convenient, I mean. I'll try to come after work. JW_

Sherlock resisted the urge to text back: "Come all the same."

 

* * *

 

By late that afternoon, Sherlock was pacing back and forth across the flat in frustration. Mycroft had texted him constantly asking about his progress, but there were no new leads. He had isolated a few targets that seemed the most obvious: Old Bailey, MI6, the Prime Minister’s seat, and Parliament.

The problem was figuring out how and when. He would have to take Mycroft’s word that the attack was occurring soon (as far as he could tell, the previous attacks had occurred without warning whatsoever).

He had studied the recorded phone conversations between active members of the Vulpi for several hours to no avail. One particular phrase had particularly been bothering him: “The fox will free the lion from its den.”

The fox had to mean the Vulpi, the "Burning fox." The "den" could indicate the seat of government... but who was the lion? The Prime Minister?

Den. A den is underground, usually. There were only a few ways they could get below ground without actually digging: the Underground, and the Thames.

Night fell again. Time seemed to be in a rush. Sherlock was staring at a map of the London Underground and murmuring “Fox… fox…” when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Yes, tea. Thank you Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said distractedly, running his finger along the Thames on the map.  _If they commandeered a boat they could dock it anywhere along the riverbank and let it explode as they made their escape..._

“Mrs. Hudson let me in as she went out.” A higher-tenored, younger female voice said. “Sorry to just barge in, but you weren’t answering your phone, and I saw your lights were on. I didn’t know you were into studying history.”

Sherlock closed his eyes, composing himself for a moment before he turned. “Mary,” he said, in the most cordial manner he could manage. He couldn’t spare the mental capacity to puzzle out her _non sequitur_ about history.

Mary was standing in his living room in her usual red coat, a pink scarf wrapped around her neck. She was holding a hat in her hands, nervously turning it over and over between her fingers. She smoothed her short blonde hair back slightly from where the hat had mussed it with one hand.

“Sherlock,” Mary said, nodding distractedly. “Redecorating?” She gestured towards the papers which were now tacked up all over the wall.

“Case,” Sherlock said dismissively. He didn’t want to fall out further with John, so he was usually on his best behavior-- the best he could manage-- with Mary. But right now the case was more important.

“Are you studying Guy Fawkes then? New hobby?"

Sherlock blinked at her. “Guy?”

Mary snorted. “Many people use more than one word when forming a sentence in the English language, you know. Yes, Guy Fawkes. You were murmuring ‘Fawkes, Fawkes,’ when I came in, and your finger was on Parliament on the map. Tomorrow is the fifth of November, yeah?”

Sherlock blinked at her incomprehensibly, then shook his head. “No, I was saying--” He paused, his face frozen in sudden comprehension.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, of gunpowder, treason and plot.

Guy Fawkes had attacked Parliament building on the 5th of November. He had tried to ignite barrels of powder underneath Parliament.

 _Fawkes. Fox. Burned Parliament. Burning Fox._ It was perfect. Symbolic, philosophical, exactly like the Vulpi.

The Ardens Vulpi had named their organization after Guy Fawkes, and their final attack would be... to blow up Parliament?

“Mary, you are _brilliant_!” Sherlock said, grasping her arms briefly with enthusiasm. He checked his watch. "Only an hour to midnight..."

Ignoring her bewildered expression, he rushed over to the maps on the wall again, his eyes darting all over. He took his phone out of his pocket and hastily started texting Mycroft.  _But how? Had they already planted the bomb beneath the building? What did "freeing the lion" mean?_

Oblivious to the thoughts reeling through his mind, Mary walked over and leaned towards the window, staring out at the night over Baker Street. “As much fun as it is to discuss historical figures with you, it wasn’t the main purpose of my visit.”

Sherlock didn’t look up, but made a non-committal “Mmm?” noise.

Mary was unfazed. “You haven't talked to John this afternoon, have you?” she asked, obviously attempting to keep her tone light and failing.

Sherlock turned back, slowly, watching her movements. Mary seemed distressed, extremely unusual for her. “No, not since I called him yesterday. He texted me this morning...”

She stared at him oddly. “Ah yes, the call at two in the morning, I had a feeling that was you,” Mary said, smirking slightly as she stood up straight.

A day earlier, Sherlock had solved a particularly boring murder: simple case of a jealous lover, hardly worth his time. John hadn’t been with him (he had given a groggy excuse about ‘patients’ and ‘needing sleep’ when Sherlock had called him), so instead of their usual ritual of getting food afterward, he had gone back to 221B with a significant chip on his shoulder.

Sherlock crossed his arms. “It was a case, I--”

“A case that you apparently solved in approximately five minutes, according to Greg. You definitely didn't need John.”

Sherlock lifted his chin defiantly. “Four and a half.”

Mary wandered about the flat, picking up the skull and putting it back down. “It was her lover, right?”

Sherlock shook his head. “What?” His phone pinged (Mycroft no doubt) but Sherlock ignored it.

“The murderer. It had to have been. Otherwise why would she have been positioned that way? It had to have been to dehumanize her. I saw the photos on Greg’s desk.”

She was correct, of course. Mary had always seemed to have higher than average intelligence, but he had no idea that her deduction skills greatly outmatched John’s. Sherlock would have been impressed, but at that same moment a frisson of anxiety suddenly ran through his whole body.

She had already been to see Lestrade. The only reason she would do so would be if she were genuinely concerned about John. 

“How long has he been missing?” Sherlock said quickly, pacing over to her, the Vulpi momentarily forgotten.

Mary looked up at him sharply. “How could you tell? From the turn-ups on my jeans?” Her mouth slid upward into a half-grin, but the humor didn’t reach her eyes.

He shook his head at her sarcasm. “What happened?”

Mary looked even more uncomfortable. “I saw him this morning. I just stopped in to his office to make sure he didn’t want to join my friend Kath and I for a cuppa. We had planned to meet for dinner after he finished with his patients, but Sarah said he left the office at noon and never came back. He didn’t say anything about leaving for the day, didn’t leave a note. I tried calling and texting him dozens of times.”

She shrugged, still attempting to seem nonchalant. “I know that it hasn’t been long enough to put in a missing person’s report, and his phone could have died, but…”

“John never does something like this,” Sherlock agreed, already feeling a tightness in his chest. He couldn’t help a refrain from starting to race through his mind:  _Not again not again not again..._

“Stupid, stupid,” he muttered, running both hands through his hair. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not with this attack looming.

Sherlock hoped that Mary hadn't noticed the fear manifesting on his face for a fraction of a second.

He had obviously failed. Mary stepped in front of him, and looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. She moved towards him, reaching out a hand in a comforting gesture. He stepped back in surprise, and she let it fall.

“I had no idea,” she said softly. “You always seemed so… cold. I never understood...” Mary shook her head.

Sherlock averted his gaze, looking at his phone for a distraction. His eyes rested on the new text with horror. It was from an unknown number: 

 

_You have thirty minutes to find him. And if you keep digging, it will go down by half._

Sherlock's stomach fell out. They knew that Mycroft had called him in as a last resort. 

“Oh my god. What is it? Tell me. I can tell this is serious.”

Sherlock looked up at Mary, frowning in a grudging respect for her perceptiveness.

After a moment, he took a deep breath. “There is a terrorist organization, the Ardens Vulpi, who have been planning an attack against the British Government for some time. Thanks to your revelation about Guy Fawkes, I’m relatively certain they are going to blow up Parliament.”

Mary shook her head. “But what does that have to do with John?”

Sherlock worked his jaw, hesitating, then handed her the phone. “They are trying to distract me, to keep me from figuring out their plot. And they know that the best way to do that--”

“Is to threaten the thing-- the person-- that matters most to you,” Mary finished quietly, staring at the phone in disbelief.

Sherlock swallowed loudly. He nodded, briefly, more of a slight movement of his chin than anything else.

Her eyes slowly rose to meet his, and they stared at each other for a moment. It was as if they were meeting each other for the first time. Everything was laid out raw, and Sherlock hated it.

“Well then,” Mary said quietly after several tense seconds. “How are we going to save him and stop one of the worst terrorist attacks in our country's history at the same time?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. For those who are wondering, "Quetzalcoatl" is an Aztec feathered snake god. Quetzalcoatl was related to gods of the wind, of Venus, of the dawn, of merchants and of arts, crafts and knowledge. You're wondering why Mycroft said it to Sherlock, aren't you? Well you'll just have to wait and see.
> 
> 2\. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the UK on the Fifth of November. I'm told there are even fireworks and everything.
> 
> 3\. I used as much as I could from the new Sherlock trailer, incorporating the clips from "The Empty Hearse" where possible. My title is a play on that title.


	2. Fire on the Water

John heard the steady dripping noise in the background first. He was floating on the surface of consciousness, in the empty void between sleep and waking.

He wanted to slip back into darkness. It was the easier path, and the more attractive one. But there was something nagging at the back of his mind, something important that he needed to remember. 

John struggled to wake with what felt like a gargantuan effort, opening his eyes only to realize that he was blindfolded. The steady _drip, drip_ from overhead was getting louder as his brain began to fully register it. He was lying on his side, on what felt like a very wet and cold surface, and his feet and hands were tied. Everything felt extremely numb and fuzzy, as if he had been drugged. 

He waded through the muddiness in his mind, trying to pinpoint the last thing he remembered.

That morning-- _W_ _as it this morning? How long have I been out?-_ \- Mary had visited him at the office, briefly, then left to meet her friend. After a busy morning of patients, he had ducked out to grab a sandwich at the corner shop.  

He was walking down the street when he got an email from the secretary that his only afternoon appointment had cancelled. He was about to text Sherlock-- telling him that he had a couple hours free to come help with the terrorist case-- when he had heard it: a long, drawn-out scream, coming from down a dark alleyway. 

John had stopped abruptly at the juncture of the alley and the street, peering down the narrow corridor. “Hello?” he had called out tentatively, glancing behind him to see if there were any police in sight.

He heard another frantic scream. “Help! Please, oh god, someone help me!” It sounded like a woman, and she was definitely in a panic.

“Shit,” John had sworn under his breath, starting to trot down the alley, and wishing that he had his Sig with him. Another scream echoed against the walls of the tall buildings on either side. John had fleetingly wondered why no one else seemed to be rushing to the woman’s aid.

As he had turned the corner, John had felt something like a needle prick his neck, and he fell almost immediately. As he was blacking out, Someone with a German accent leaned in and said, "You’re so predictable, you know zat, Dr. Vatson?” 

So. He’d been kidnapped then. Again _. I wonder what it is this time. Did Sherlock piss off some smugglers again? Or is it another psychopath with an unhealthy obsession? At least Mary isn’t with me. I’m such an idiot, running down that alley without backup._  

John swore inwardly. He had no idea how long he’d been gone. Mary must be worried sick.  

He tried to suss out whether he had any injuries. The fuzziness in his head indicated that they had drugged him with some kind of sedative. Depending on the dosage, he could have been out for some time. John couldn’t feel any injuries per se, but his whole body still felt somewhat numb so it was hard to tell. 

John listened carefully. Somewhere not far away he could hear voices.  He tried not to move very much and risk giving away that he was awake. 

“Holmes must be getting close. We are going to have to initiate plan Epsilon.”

 _Great. So it does have to do with Sherlock. Figures._  

“Not yet,” the same German-sounding voice from earlier said. “If ve do it too soon, he vill figure out ze full scale of ze plans.”

“Too late, and we won’t even be able to use Watson for leverage,” a third voice said.

“Let me do ze thinking. Zat is vat I’m for. Cooper, go and tell ze men ve are moving out. Vilson, go and vake up ze Doctor. I vill be along in a moment.” 

John heard footsteps echoing around him, though it was hard to tell whether they were coming closer or further away; they must be somewhere that was completely encircled on all sides. Maybe the sewers? Sherlock would know in seconds.

He was starting to feel his arms and legs more, and John tried to shift slightly without making any sound, pulling at his bonds, but they were tied securely.

John heard the footsteps starting to get louder, and he stilled himself as best he could. The steps stopped right in front of him, and a hand felt under his nose (checking to see if he was still breathing) and then felt his pulse. John heard a chuckle as the blindfold was removed.

“You can stop pretending, mate,” it was the third voice. “I can tell you’re awake.”

John was contemplating his next move when a heavy boot kicked him right in the solar plexus. His body caved in with the blow, and he let out a loud involuntary grunt as the wind was knocked out of him. _Brilliant._ A ruptured spleen was just what he needed right now. 

John tried to breathe in, haltingly, and blinked his eyes open just as the man kicked him again, this time in the stomach. He closed his eyes in pain. 

“Enough. Go avay, Vilson,” the German voice said. John hadn’t even noticed him arrive. 

“But, sir--”

“I said _go_.” A set of footsteps echoed and faded away.

John blinked, still breathing hard, trying to find his bearings. His eyes eventually focused on a man with a dark beard who was crouching right next to him and smiling. 

“Good afternoon, Dr. Watson,” he said quietly. It was same voice as the German-accented one, but now he sounded… English. John furrowed his brow. 

The man looked at his watch. “Well, actually, good evening. Rather hard to tell time down here, really.” His voice was smooth, not quite public school, but almost. But that could be an affectation. 

John’s eyes darted around, trying to discern their location. They were in some kind of tunnel, but it didn’t seem to be the sewers. They were definitely below ground.

“You’re thirsty, I’d wager,” the bearded man said, taking a water bottle out of his pocket. John hadn’t realized it until then, but he was, indeed, extremely thirsty. The man shifted, taking care to show John that the bottle was still sealed before he opened it and lifted John’s head slightly to help him drink. John contemplated refusing to drink it, but at this point dehydration could kill him as easily as a gun could. 

“Good cop, bad cop, eh?” John said after he had drunk his fill. “It’s not really going to work on me, mate. I’m with the police.” His voice was raspy-- he must have been unconscious even longer than he had originally thought. 

“Och, aye? Ya liar,” the bearded man said in a Scottish accent, laughing. John looked at him incredulously.  _Who_ _is_ _this guy?_ He obviously didn’t want John to know his true nationality or origins.

John decided to get down to brass tacks. “What’s with the accents?”

“Vat, you mean zis?” the bearded man said in his German accent again. He didn’t answer John’s question, instead cracking a wide grin. It was hard to tell how old he was, exactly, because of the beard and the hat he wore. John’s eyes flicked over the rest of him-- he was wearing para-military gear, all black. Even a kevlar vest. He had a holster on his hip with a semi-automatic in it, and his boots were heavy duty, definitely military grade. Not that many people had access to this kind of gear, unless they were…  

John’s eyes wandered back up to meet the bearded man’s gaze. He was still staring back at John with vague interest and what almost looked like amusement. “Are you trying to deduce who I am, Dr. Watson? How’s it going so far?” He had switched back into the English accent.

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” John said, giving up on dancing around the issue. “What do you want with Sherlock?” 

The bearded man grinned even wider. “Now, if I told you, that would spoil all the fun, wouldn’t it? How about you just call me… Fox?” He smiled again, his white teeth glinting menacingly, as if that were a personal joke. John didn’t smile back, so he sighed and checked his watch again. “Oops, we had better get on.”

The man-- “Fox”-- pulled out a knife. John tried to keep his face calm, but his mind jumped to what the man could possibly mean to use it for; it was a large hunting knife, capable of gutting a stag (or a human) easily.  He had no time to react further before the man reached behind him and cut the ties on John’s feet with one quick stroke, leaving the zip tie on his wrists intact.

“Up you go,” he said, pulling John to a standing position. John tried to stand upright, but his legs couldn’t quite stay beneath him and he wobbled slightly.

“Where are we going?” John mumbled. 

“Oh you’ll see. We have to distract your Sherlock.” Fox pulled something out of his pocket and deftly re-blindfolded John.

“ _Herkommen_!” he yelled down the tunnel, and footsteps started to echo down the tunnel. 

“He’s not _my_ Sh--” John’s voice was muffled when a black bag was pulled over his head (which he thought was a little overkill) but he could still hear Fox’s chuckle.

“Oh, that may be true. But you will always be _his John_ ,” Fox said into his ear. 

 

* * *

Sherlock evaluated Mary with cool calculation. “We? _We_ are not doing anything. You’ll stay here, and I’ll find John.” 

“Not bloody likely,” Mary said, crossing her arms. “I’m coming with you. Besides, I have my motorbike. It’s faster in traffic. We have less than a half hour to figure out where he is and get there. Also, I have this.” She pulled John’s Sig Sauer out of the back of her trousers. 

Sherlock looked at her incredulously. 

Mary lifted her chin, thinking that he his gaze was condescending rather than surprised. “John showed me how to use it.”

“No, no. No. You’re not coming. John would never forgive me if... I don’t have time to argue,” Sherlock said, waving his hand dismissively. His phone pinged again. He grabbed it from Mary, pulling up the new text message, again from a blocked number.

 

_He is where the Angel swallows men whole. 28 minutes until the Angel burns._

_Angel? Why is angel capitalized? Swallows man whole… is it some kind of cryptic Biblical reference?_

“What does it say?” Mary asked. Sherlock repeated the message, starting to pace back and forth. He needed to relay the new information to Mycroft somehow, but it was risky. 

If he warned Mycroft, they would know, and they would cut the time to find John in half. They had obviously tapped his phone somehow. But Sherlock didn't warn Mycroft, the bomb would detonate while he was saving John. Parliament was empty right now, but who knew how many civilians could be caught in the crossfire.

After another fraction of a second, Sherlock made a decision. He raced into the kitchen, dropping his phone on the table unceremoniously and grabbing a frying pan.

Mary followed him, concern written all over her body. “What are you--”

Sherlock said nothing and promptly smashed his phone with the frying pan. He fished through the broken plastic to find the simcard, and he snapped it in two.  

“Give me your phone,” he said, ignoring the appalled look on Mary’s face.

“What the hell--”

“ _Now_! John’s losing time every second we sit here chatting!” Sherlock held out his hand again for emphasis.

She handed him her phone without further comment, and he called Mycroft immediately. When his brother picked up, Sherlock said, “Parliament. Midnight,” without prelude. 

“Fire on the water?” Mycroft said tersely. 

He paused. “Only in winter’s summer,” he responded and hung up immediately. He handed Mary her phone, running back to his room to get dressed. He threw something on as quickly as possible as his mind raced.  

“What was that about?” Mary called after him.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock said, not bothering to explain it to her in detail. “Fire on the water” was their code for compromised communication. Sherlock’s response told Mycroft that Sherlock was going into radio silence. 

Where did they have him? Angel. Angels swallowing men. It couldn’t be Parliament, that was too obvious. Or was it? Were they trying to lure him to the blast radius?

No. That made no sense. The whole point was to keep Sherlock from being in two places at once. To keep him from stopping the bomb. 

He heard an unfamiliar text message alert noise from the living room as he was pulling on his shoes. Mary’s phone. 

“Sherlock,” Mary’s voice said quietly as Sherlock paced quickly back down the hallway to where she was standing, her shoulders hunched. “It’s another text… from the terrorists.” 

He took the phone from her, scowling. Destroying his phone had apparently been pointless; they somehow knew that he had used Mary’s phone. Was it a bug in the flat? Or was it on Mycroft’s end? Where was the leak? 

His eyes darted over the new text.

 

_Did you think it would be that easy? Now you only have 14 minutes instead of 28. I did warn you._

Sherlock growled in frustration and texted back in rapid fire.

 

_How do I even know you really have him? That he’s alive?_

Several tense seconds went by, and another text arrived. This one was just a photo attachment. Trying to keep his fingers from shaking, Sherlock opened it, Mary looking over his shoulder. 

It was a photo of John lying on his side, with his hands and feet tied, and he was blindfolded. He had a gash on his forehead, but otherwise he appeared unharmed. 

Mary let out a little half-sob next to him, the first time she had really shown any emotion. Sherlock couldn’t tear his eyes away from the image, but not because he was focused on John. He was looking at the floor around him. 

It looked like he was in… a Tube station. But where? 

Angel. _Where the Angel swallows men whole. A tube station is where men are swallowed whole into the earth._

“They have him at the Angel Tube station,” Sherlock said, turning and starting to leave the flat, grabbing his Belstaff as he ran.

He was all the way down the stairs when he realized that Mary was still behind him. Sherlock whirled around, his coat swirling around him, and she stopped on the final step behind him. 

“I’m coming,” she said without preamble.

“No.”

“I have the only phone with contact to the terrorists. I’m coming." 

Sherlock swore under his breath, rubbing his eyes with one hand. She was right. Destroying his phone meant that if the rules changed again or if they moved him-- which they might-- he would have no way of knowing. 

Sherlock opened his eyes and stared back up at Mary. John would never forgive him if something happened to Mary, but she was his best chance to find John. Paradox. 

“Fine,” he clipped, turning on his heel with her running after him. “But I’m driving.”

Within a couple of minutes they were speeding through the streets of London, Mary on the motorbike behind him. Sherlock’s body was coursing with adrenaline, but he was trying desperately not to think about what would happen if they didn’t make it in time. 

After several minutes, Mary’s phone buzzed. She held it out in front of Sherlock. It said: _Eight minutes and counting..._  

Sherlock looked forward again and fiercely gunned the engine, sending them flying through the night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To see the clip with Mary and Sherlock on the motorbike (and she does indeed show him a text that says "Eight minutes and counting") check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-UtaRyoenE


	3. The Angelic Inferno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also unbetaed. Thanks for reading.

 

John awoke with a start. He was still blindfolded, and he stayed quiet for several minutes, waiting, listening. Eventually he concluded that there were no sounds of life around him. For better or worse, he was alone this time. His skull ached, and he barely recalled being hit over the head, not long after he was re-blindfolded. He couldn’t remember being moved and things still felt slightly hazy. John tried to move his legs and realized that he was completely tied up again, just like he had been in the tunnel. Brilliant. 

This time, the air felt more close, dense, as if the room around him weren’t as big. It was slightly warmer, and the air seemed to absorb every sound instead of echoing it. It also smelled of old must and some other undercurrent smell… was that… bleach?

John decided it was time to stop being passive. He rubbed his face against his shoulder, trying to dislodge the blindfold, which was unfortunately tied rather tightly around his head. He finally managed to push it up, and looked around quickly. He was in some sort of cupboard or supply closet.  

Shaking his head, John tested the ties on his hands, which were still behind his back. Plastic zip ties, most likely. John angled his feet in front of him, trying to see if his boots were still on-- they were. He gritted his teeth and bent his back in an arch, reaching with his hands toward his left boot. John felt around a bit, and hollow fear started to pit itself in his stomach. His knife, which he hid there for just this kind of occasion, was gone.  

 _Shit._ That had been his only contingency plan. 

John straightened out, still lying on his side, his cheek chafing against the hard concrete floor. What would Sherlock do?

He gathered that he had been taken hostage to distract Sherlock. But from what? John racked his brain, trying to remember what Sherlock had said about the terrorist case. He really hadn’t given John any details. Fox. That was the only thing he knew, and it was obviously a fake name. 

John swore under his breath and hit his head against the floor slightly in a dull thunk. If only he had been able to leave his pride behind and had gone to help Sherlock in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. He would probably be solving the case with Sherlock at this very moment. But being able to let go of the chip on his shoulder since Sherlock’s return had been more difficult than he had imagined.

John flexed his right hand, remembering the ache he had felt after he had punched Sherlock that first day. Sherlock had surprised John and Mary at a restaurant, disguising himself as their waiter, putting on a ridiculous and theatrical display as was he was wont to do. John hadn't recognized him at first.

Because Sherlock was dead. John had moved on. It was over. He was with Mary, and that life-- his old life in 221B, with his brilliant, amazing (and, in the end, cruelly selfish) best friend-- was gone. He wasn’t even angry anymore. 

But then Sherlock had burst back onto his life with little more than a “short version... not dead,” and he had expected John to just rush off with him again as if the past three years had been no more than a momentary blip, easily forgotten.  

The one moment John had longed for, had asked Sherlock's memory for ten times over had finally happened. And instead of relief or gratitude, all he felt was rage. Punching Sherlock hadn’t assuaged the hot anger coursing through his whole body; if anything, it had magnified it. 

“I expect I owe you some kind of an apology," Sherlock had said, his heterochromatic eyes wide, stopping short when he saw the look on John's face. This was obviously not the reaction he had expected. John couldn't near the murmurings of people around the restaurant, or feel Mary trying to calm him down. All he could hear was a roaring sound in his ears, a howling wind. A mournful dirge for the past three years of his life. 

Later, in a cold and dingy diner, Sherlock had explained how he had jumped to save him and the others. That he’d had to hunt down Moriarty’s associates before he could come home, _et cetera, et cetera._   It made perfect sense. It was all so coldly, utterly logical, just like Sherlock. But as Sherlock had been recounting his tale to John and Mary (who had been thrust, unfairly, into the role of peacekeeper), John had barely been able to absorb what he was saying. He had watched Sherlock’s mouth moving, his hands gesturing, his eyes fixed on John-- but John couldn’t actually comprehend the words. The roaring in his ears wouldn’t let him. It was like he was caught in a tidal wave, unable to surface.  

John had spoken with thinly veiled fury, as quietly as he could manage. “I don’t care  _how_  you did it. I want to know  _why_.”

Sherlock had seemed worried, an expression that John had never seen in Sherlock’s eyes before. He simply couldn’t seem to grasp the three years of grief he had put John through.

John's thoughts kept drifting back to Sherlock's grave, which he had visited dozens upon dozens of times, alone. Looking down at the name inscribed in the cold stone, pain had creeped through every nerve, every synapse in his body until his heart had felt hollowed out and empty. 

The last time he had gone, with Mary, was on the third anniversary of Sherlock’s death. Mary had held his hand, standing beside him full of strength and love, while he wept over the grave of his best friend, for the life he had lost. And then he had turned his back, never planning on visiting it again. 

And it had all been a lie, because the grave was empty.

John had forgiven Sherlock, of course, but forgiving is not the same as forgetting. 

 _You machine._ ome of the last words that John had ever uttered to Sherlock, which he had regretted ever since. But after Sherlock had come back, he was starting to think he had been right. Sherlock simply didn’t understand what he'd done.

Still, the look in Sherlock’s eyes when John had told him that he would not, in fact, be moving back into 221B, felt like a knife to his heart. He couldn’t let Sherlock see it. He was with Mary, he had a stable job now, and he couldn’t simply drop his work whenever Sherlock felt like calling him to go on a case. He had gone to crime scenes a few times, simply to keep Sherlock from texting him so much. Sherlock almost seemed nervous around John, and once in a while, when he thought John wasn’t looking, Sherlock would look at him with unfathomable sadness. Sometimes he felt guilty, but the guilt quickly turned into anger again, so white-hot that his bad hand trembled. He couldn't temper the deep betrayal he felt towards the man who, once, had been his entire world.  

John thunked his head dully against the floor again. The man who was, undoubtedly, racing to his rescue and was unable to stop a terrorist attack from occurring because of John’s complete and utter stupidity. 

John opened his eyes. Time to stop wallowing in self-pity. Lifting his head slightly from the floor, he looked up, trying to see if there was anything in the room that could be used to break his bonds. 

In the background, ever so faintly, he heard a noise. His head snapped backward, though of course he couldn’t see anything beyond the small room he was in. He listened intently. It sounded almost like… a train.

 

* * *

Sherlock drove the motorbike up onto the sidewalk, ignoring the protests of pedestrians who had to duck out of the way or risk being run over. He maneuvered directly over to the entrance of the Angel Street Tube Station. Sherlock jumped off the bike immediately, pulling the helmet off and throwing it to the side. He and Mary ran together down the stairs to the Tube Station, dodging around the late-night commuters, sometimes bumping into someone but continuing to rush on without missing a beat. 

“Get out! Get out of here! There’s going to be a fire! Run!” Mary yelled at everyone she passed, as Sherlock continued to run in silence. It hadn’t even occurred to him to warn others about the possibility of a conflagration in the station, but Mary was extremely altruistic. Like John.

“Time?!” Sherlock yelled over his shoulder. 

“Three minutes!” she called back after glancing at her phone.  

Sherlock skidded around the corner just as a train was leaving the station. The tile was the same as the photo, but there was no sight of John. The Vulpi must have taken a picture of him before moving him.

There were a few stragglers still on the platform, but at Mary’s insistence they were all soon gone.  

“Now what?” Mary said, panting. She looked around the station, running her hand through her hair in frustration. “He’s not here!”

“Obviously,” Sherlock said tersely.

He was busy checking under all of the benches for any clues about where the terrorists had gone. The problem was that a Tube station was also completely full of human detrius that it was difficult to obtain any useful information from what lay before him. 

Suddenly, Mary gasped. “Sherlock,” she said, her voice echoing through the empty Tube station.

Sherlock’s head whipped up so quickly that his neck cracked, and he rubbed it as he ran over to her. Mary was staring at the ceiling in disbelief. 

There was a giant flaming golden fox, eating its own tail, painted on the ceiling.  

They both stared at the painting, momentarily unable to move, as if the glinting fox would reveal John’s location. The shimmering colors were mesmerizing, seeming to glint in all shades of gold, auburn, and scarlet. The jet-black eyes stared down at them mischievously.  

They were both snapped out of their reverie when a loud thunking noise echoed through the station. “What was that?” Mary said quietly, as if talking at a normal level would incite the terrorists to attack sooner.  

The thunking noise started again, in short and long knocks. Rhythmic.

“Is that morse code?” Mary said. Sherlock glanced at her, his eyebrows raised, but she simply shrugged.

“You really are full of surprises. Yes, someone’s tapping out ‘S.O.S,’” Sherlock said, as he turned and ran to the end of the station. There was a single door, marked “supply closet.” Sherlock tried to wrench it open, but it was locked. 

“John! Are you alright?” Sherlock yelled through the door. His heart was pounding as he waited for a response, but he ignored it. 

Another bang sounded. John must be unable to speak.  

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sherlock pulled his lockpick kit out of his pocket and at that very moment, it started to rain.  

“What the bloody hell?” Mary cursed, pulling her scarf over her head. “They must have turned on the fire sprinklers.” 

Sherlock held his hand up, and smelled the liquid. He averted his gaze, starting to pick the lock with nimble fingers. “Mary. Get out, right now,” he said calmly.

“W-what?” Mary said, seeing the look on his face. Sherlock’s hair and coat were quickly soaked, and the entire Tube station was covered in liquid within seconds.

“Use your senses. It’s kerosene. Please, just go. I promise I’ll save him.” Mary’s froze, staring at him in abject horror. 

“I can’t,” she said. Sherlock made a frustrated sound, wiping kerosene from his eyes.

“Fine. When I say run, you run.” The lock finally gave way, and Sherlock swung the door open.

John was lying on his side, a wooden broom in his teeth. He must have been using it to knock against the door. 

“About bloody time!” John yelled, spitting out the broom handle and holding up his bound hands. “Get these bloody things off me.”

“No time,” Sherlock said, hoisting John up into his arms and turning to Mary, who was now soaked with kerosene. Her blond hair was almost matted to her head. John’s eyes widened when he saw her.

“Mary! What are you--” John started to say. 

“Run!” Sherlock interrupted, sprinting as fast as he could with the extremely slippery ground beneath him and a not-so-light former army doctor in his arms. He could hear Mary running directly behind him.  

“Mary!? What is she doing here? I can’t see her! Sherlock!” John was yelling up at him. Sherlock didn't respond, because he heard it in the distance: a train was coming.

 _Oh. That’s clever. Very clever. Elegant_. The train’s sparks would set off the fire. The terrorists didn’t even have to be there to set the blaze. 

They had reached the turnstiles when the train arrived at the station and there was a loud whooshing sound as the kerosene caught fire. Sherlock glanced behind his shoulder, and he could see the flames starting to spread along the platform at an unnerving speed.  

Mary turned to look behind them, an involuntary impulse, but Sherlock shouted, “Don’t stop! Keep looking forward! _Move!_ ” 

He finally reached the stairs, which by now were extremely slick. Mary was ten yards behind him. As they ran upward, the fire started licking the hallway behind them, and adrenaline coursed through Sherlock’s system. Despite John’s dead weight he sprinted up the steps two at a time until they were finally above ground, and he ran a hundred yards away before turning and looking back. 

The entire entrance was aflame and billowing smoke. There were sirens in the background, and people gathered nearby, pointing and speaking in horrified tones.

Mary was still running over to Sherlock, her eyes trained on the person in his arms (who was currently shouting obscenities). John’s weight suddenly felt untenable, but Sherlock started to lower him to the ground very carefully before he collapsed. The sound of wailing sirens was almost abhorrently loud now, screaming against Sherlock’s skull.

“Mary! Mary-- where’s Mary? What the fuck just happened?” John wrestled out of his arms as Sherlock put him down, and Mary quickly knelt next to him. She kissed John, briefly, then hovered over him and started speaking in hushed tones as she stroked his face. Sherlock stood and walked a few paces away, suddenly unsure of himself. 

Sherlock felt… strange. His whole body had pulsed with so much adrenaline that he was now feeling the effects of the crash, but it was more than that. He held out his hands. They were trembling. He closed his eyes, waiting for the huge rush of relief to take hold. John was safe. But there was still a strange sharp-edged feeling in his stomach, something that had lodged itself there from the moment he knew John had been kidnapped.

He was... afraid. 

Fear. Like the night when he had been poisoned by the terror gas, back in Baskerville. Or when Moriarty had threatened to kill John if he hadn’t jumped. The fly in the ointment. Grit on the lens. Something he usually kept at bay. 

He slowly turned back to watch Mary and John from afar. Mary had managed to cut John’s bonds, and they were kneeling, their bodies naturally leaning towards each other. John held Mary’s face in both of his hands, and he was speaking softly but firmly, his eyes dangerously dark. Tears were rolling down her face, and she was shaking her head.

Somewhere off in the distance, a clock struck midnight. That had some kind of significance, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care at the moment. His mind was… offline. He shivered again. That realization derailed him more than anything else.

Sherlock took a step toward them, then stopped. John closed his eyes, and they leaned towards each other until their foreheads were touching. Relief outlined both of their frames, and Mary clutched at both of John’s wrists.

“You don’t want to interrupt the happy reunion, do you?” 

Sherlock closed his eyes, gritting his teeth, but didn’t turn around. His mind snapped back online in an instant. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his kerosene-soaked Belstaff. They couldn’t betray him by trembling if they were hidden.

“What do you want,” he said through his teeth.

“Wouldn’t you like to inquire as to whether I stopped the attack on Parliament?”  Mycroft asked, stepping quietly to stand at his side. Sherlock could see him swinging his umbrella out of the corner of his eye, and his tone oozed smugness. It made Sherlock’s skin crawl.  

“I’m assuming you did, or you would be cleaning up the carnage right now instead of tormenting me.” 

Mycroft tilted his head slightly. They both stood quietly for a moment, watching as paramedics rushed over to John and Mary, checking to see if they were injured and wrapping them in blankets.  

Mycroft sighed and rolled his eyes at Sherlock’s stubborn silence. “There were C-4 bombs in the cellar. Strapped to the supporting columns. No one was even in the building, so there would have been minimal casualties. It was rather straightforward.”

Sherlock made a noncommittal noise. 

It had been too easy. Something nagged at the back of his mind, two warring impulses. The impulse to dig deeper, and the impulse to continue watching John, who was alive and only yards away. It was a kind of reassurance that he had rarely needed before-- only a handful of times, only when John had been in mortal danger.

Making a decision, he broke his gaze and turned his back. The work was more important. It was the only thing he could rely on, in the end.

The flames were licking the opening of the Tube station, and firemen were spraying water down the tunnel to no avail. There were dozens of police cars and ambulances and now hundreds of onlookers.

The attack was too simple, too easily averted. He had saved John, but he wasn’t supposed to stop the attack on Parliament. It was a choice, and he was supposed to choose wrong. 

He closed his eyes, searching through his mind palace to the wall in 221B where he had tacked up all of the information on the Vulpi. The attacks in London, Berlin, Madrid, Cairo…  the common thread, the only one, was that there was always a diversion.  

But which was the real diversion.

Mycroft, who remained facing the other direction, cleared his throat loudly. "I want to... thank you. I could not have done it without you." 

The uncharacteristic gratitude elicited a mere huff of annoyance from Sherlock, though he was secretly pleased. Mycroft hardly ever thanked anyone.

They stood in silence for a few more moments, still facing opposite directions. Mycroft tilted his head towards John and Mary.

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like? Being one half of a whole?” 

“Why do you care?” Sherlock asked, slightly annoyed.

“Ah, I think the real question, dear brother, is whether _you_ do.”

Sherlock scowled. He pulled his coat closer around him, trying desperately to pull his thoughts back to the case and to stop thinking about John. The Vulpi had never been foiled before. What was he missing?

Mycroft hefted another-long suffering sigh. “You might want to get that precious coat of yours dry-cleaned right away, if you want to save it. It might not be salvageable.” Sherlock rolled his eyes and didn’t respond.

His brother tapped his umbrella twice, turning and striding purposefully towards Anthea, who waited by a black car that was lurking some distance away.  

“Remember Redbeard, Sherlock," he called over his shoulder.

Sherlock frowned even further, and his brow wrinkling. He continued to stare at the flames. 

The Burning Fox. They wanted to destabilize the whole government, so Parliament was an obvious choice. But why attack at night when no one was there? And why would they give him so many clues?

“Sherlock." Sherlock closed his eyes briefly and turned. Mary was watching them from afar, still wrapped in a blanket. John was standing directly in front of him and staring at Sherlock’s feet. His whole body seemed to vibrate at the edges. Sherlock scrutinized his face, trying to discern whether his furrowed brow and pained expression was of shock or… anger. 

“How could you,” John said to Sherlock’s feet, so quietly that Sherlock could barely hear him. 

Anger, then. His words and stance were a perfect affectation of compact, soldierly control, shielding a crackling electricity underneath. Sherlock felt a frisson of anxiety down his spine. 

 “John, I--”

“How could you put her into danger like that?” John tore his gaze from the ground and it trailed up Sherlock’s body to his eyes. 

“I didn’t have a choice, John, her phone--”

“Oh yes, her phone. The phone that the _terrorists_ contacted her on, right before you recklessly sped through London on a motorbike to throw her straight into a waiting inferno. Well done.” He laughed mirthlessly, a harsh, grating sound.

Sherlock opened his mouth, then closed it. His mind was reeling, trying to find the right thing to say. It was an uncomfortable, alien feeling; he normally didn't care what anyone thought, and burning bridges was a matter of course. But  this was John, and he had already damaged their friendship almost beyond repair.

Sherlock tried to keep his voice from trembling. “John, listen. Mary helped me. I might not have found you in time, or alerted Mycroft about the attack on Parliament, if it weren’t for her. She--”

“I don’t care, Sherlock. You had no right to involve her _._ ” John swallowed deeply, his adam’s apple working up and down. His fists were clenched at his sides, and he was standing ramrod straight.

John’s cerulean eyes glinted in the flickering ambient light, and he looked like he was working up the courage to say something. His mouth was clenched tightly, the lines around it more defined than Sherlock had ever seen them. 

John looked up at Sherlock, his eyes held sadness mixed with the bitterness. “It was different, doing this with you... back then. When it was only me and you, running away from death time after time. Barely making it out alive. It’s not only me anymore. I can’t-- I _won’t_ \-- lose Mary. She’s all I had-- have.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word.

He breathed in deeply, closing his eyes briefly before he opened them again. “If that means I have to completely cut myself off from you, so be it. You walked away from me once without looking back, so I can do it too. Stay away from us, Sherlock. Stay away from _me_.” 

Sherlock stepped backward in shock. John’s words sliced through the air like a razor. It was inconceivable, surreal. Sherlock was about to argue, but something in John’s eyes stopped him. 

John’s mouth slanted in a bitter grin. “You should be thanking me. Sentiment, right? A defect of the losing side? Well, you win. You won’t have me to cloud your precious brilliance any longer. And no one can use me against you. You're free.”

John took a short half-breath, exhaling quickly through his nose as if he couldn’t quite get enough air. “Goodbye, Sherlock.”

John turned on his heel in military style, and paced evenly back to Mary, who looked at Sherlock in a forlorn and apologetic way as John reached her. They turned and walked away, never looking back. Sherlock watched as their bodies faded into the night, until there was nothing left but the haunting flicker of the fire. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There really is an Angel Street Tube Station in London. You know, in case you were wondering.


	4. Embers and Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a topical note, the first three chapters of this were written and published here before The Empty Hearse aired, so all similarities to the actual episode (with the exception of one edited line in Chapter 3) were before I knew what happened in the episode itself.
> 
> And, thanks to johnwatsonology for being an amazing beta! (I finally got one! yay!)

John held the door open for Mary before sliding into the cab. As they inched through the crowds of people who had turned out to witness the blaze, John looked very pointedly out the window in the other direction. He refused to admit to himself that it was to avoid seeing a certain tall figure silhouetted against the flames.

The barely-contained rage was still shimmering through his body. His ire wasn’t only directed at Sherlock, either. He was angry at Mary, at Mycroft, at the bloody terrorists. 

Mostly, though, he was furious with himself. He’d let himself be sucked back into Sherlock’s world. The man was like a bloody drug that he couldn’t quit. It was time to go cold turkey, before it was too late. 

“John--”

“Not now _,_ Mary,” John said through gritted teeth. She made an exasperated noise, then sat back and crossed her arms. They sat in silence for several minutes.

Eventually, he could tell that she was about to speak again, so he tried to interrupt. “Don’t--” 

“No. My turn now. I don’t care if you’re actually listening, but I’m going to say this one more time. _I_ was the one who roped _him_ into this. He tried to stop me, make me stay behind. I wouldn’t let him. Did you at least tell him about the ‘Fox’ guy who kidnapped you?”

John didn’t reply, so she continued, “You know, he has done everything in his power to make it up to you. Why can’t you just let it go? Why can’t you just forgive him? He did it all for you, after all. He only wants to be part of your life again.”

John kept looking outward, looking but not seeing, maintaining his stony silence despite the thoughts whirling through his head. 

Mary was the only thing in his life that was stable and normal. Eventually, someday, some villain or another would use her against him. He couldn’t let that happen.

But it was more than that. He simply couldn't trust Sherlock anymore. He took that from John when he had lied.

Deep down, he knew that Sherlock would leave him behind again, someday, because he thought it was “best.” John didn’t think he could handle it a second time-- not if he let himself become fully reliant on him again. He was doing this out of simple self-preservation. 

Mary finally threw up her hands in annoyance. “You can be total idiot sometimes, you know that?” She said, turning back towards her own window.  

It was so much like something Sherlock would say that John had to fight the urge to punch the door.

  

* * *

Sherlock’s heels clicked on the cobblestones as he walked down the darkened narrow streets. The only sounds around him were the echoing of his footsteps. From far, far away, he heard the chiming of a clock. 

Sherlock couldn’t go back to his flat. He had to think, and going back there would be fruitless. He would simply stare at the empty chair and everything it meant. 

 _Focus._ Something wasn’t right about the Vulpi. The pieces of the puzzle still didn’t fit together quite right, as if there was still something missing. It was itching beneath his skin. 

On the surface everything had been resolved; the attack on Parliament had been averted, John was no longer in danger.

His mind flashed to the image of John, trembling with rage as he stood before him. John, unable to meet his gaze as his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

Sherlock exhaled loudly and pushed his hands into his pockets, turning a corner. He was in one of his favorite parts of nighttime London. The twisting, winding alleyways were reminiscent of the city’s medieval past, and in some ways, it almost felt like he was navigating through Old England. It also had the added advantage of very few CCTV cameras to watch him. He felt the cavernous emptiness that was a sleeping city spread out at his feet, full of danger and mystery. The pulse of his London was on these cobblestone streets. John would have loved it. 

For what seemed like the hundredth time that evening, Sherlock cursed himself for being unable to control his thoughts. He attempted to ignore the feeling that something sharp was now lodged in his chest. It was worse, so much worse, than the dull ache that had taken residence there ever since his return.  

John had made his choice. He hadn’t chosen Sherlock; he chose Mary. He chose to have a life without him. 

It was better this way.

Sherlock stopped short, leaning against a wall. Perfect. He had gone on a walk to stop thinking about John and solve the case, and John was all he could think about. 

He really, really needed a cigarette. Or something stronger. Stronger would be better.

The wind whispered around him, lifting the edges of his coat. The silence, which he usually welcomed, became unbearably _loud._ He couldn’t stand it anymore. The waves of empty sound were crashing down on him, roaring in his ears. 

After another long pause, Sherlock stood up straight and walked briskly back the way he came, taking shortcuts until he made it back to a main thoroughfare, where there were a few cars if not much foot traffic. He steadied himself against a building in the mouth of an alley, trying to breathe. 

He hadn’t used in so long. During his absence, he had been tempted many times. The yawning chasm of his loneliness-- which Sherlock had never known to be loneliness, not before he lost John-- was like a black abyss stretching out in front of him endlessly. But there had always been the one tiny pinprick of light, the hope of return, of redemption. Now that light had gone out.

The concentric circles of Sherlock’s world, the peripheral rooms of his mind palace, had narrowed further and further in the past few minutes until he was trapped in one narrow place. The room in the farthest, darkest part of him, where he kept the longing. There was something bestial, something not altogether human, beating against the doors. 

Sherlock closed his eyes.

If he gave in, he would be able to forget, to focus; but his stomach churned at the thought of the disappointment in John’s eyes. _John would never know, though, would he?_ a small voice said in the back of his mind.

Sherlock raised his hand to his forehead, brushing his hair from where it was sticking to his forehead. As he did, his hand started to tremble slightly. 

He stared at it, turning his palm over. The tremor didn’t stop. 

It wasn’t a new phenomenon, but it hadn’t happened in a long time. He desperately needed something, anything, to take the edge off. 

Sherlock heard footsteps down the sidewalk, and he glanced up. A man ( _thirties, day labor worker, judging by the wearing patterns on his jeans, left-handed_ ) was striding towards him with purpose ( _heading home from the pub, girlfriend-- no, wife-- is annoyed by how late he is_ ), smoking a cigarette. 

“Oi mate,” Sherlock said with a slight accent, stepping out of the shadows. “Lend us a cig, eh?” He stuffed his shaking hand in his pocket. 

Stopping for a moment, he evaluated Sherlock briefly, apparently decided he wasn’t a nutter, then shrugged. He pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket.  

As he handed it to Sherlock, Sherlock grinned sheepishly, taking it with his left hand. “Thanks. I’m trying to quit, ya’know? The wife don’t like it.” 

The man chuckled, taking a long drag. “Aye, I hear ya. Same. Make sure you wash your mouth out before you kiss ‘er though, eh?” 

Sherlock chuckled in what he hoped was a jovial and congenial manner. “Gotta light?” he said, and the man threw him his lighter. Once he had the end burning, Sherlock a long drag and held it in as long as possible, extending his arm out. 

 _Oh. That’s good. That is so, so good._  It was definitely notlow-tar. 

“Thanks, mate,” Sherlock said, starting to walk by. “Anytime,” the man looked at him curiously, but moved on. 

Sherlock walked, sighing in pleasure as he took each drag (taking care to hold the embers far away from his kerosene-soaked Belstaff). The nicotine would help him think, at least. It wasn’t cocaine, but it was better than nothing.  

Sherlock took a drag, staring at the cigarette in his hand. He tapped the ash from the end, letting the smoke escape through the corner of his mouth. He watched the burning embers on the end smolder for a moment. His mind flashed back to the burning fox painted on the ceiling. 

The fox that was endlessly burning. What was their endgame? The attack on Parliament had seemed like their final stroke, but something told him that it wasn’t. After all, the Fifth of November had only begun a couple of hours ago. There was still plenty of time.

The embers, though a slow burn, ate away at the paper of his cigarette bit by bit. Not a full flame, not flashy, but the result was the same. 

But that wasn’t the Vulpi’s _modus operandi._ They went for the fireworks, for the visible attacks that made headlines. 

What if that was the whole point? These past few years might have all been leading up to this one last diversion, setting them up to feel complacent that it was over. 

“ _The Lion will be released from its den_ ,” they had said.  

There was another animal mentioned in the chatter… what was it? Sherlock racked his brain. There was… something about an Eagle.  

The burning fox. Foxes and lions. Eagles and angels. 

Sherlock shook his head to clear it. This was going nowhere. He needed to get to the source. 

He reached in his jacket pocket for his phone, but remembered-- belatedly-- that it was currently in pieces in his flat, under a frying pan.  However, his fingers touched something rectangular. He pulled it out: it was Mary’s phone. 

Sherlock stared at the phone. He hadn’t noticed her putting it in his pocket. Why would she have?  

_There are no coincidences._

His brow furrowed, Sherlock turned it on (ignoring the tremor in his hand) and opened the text messages, composing one to the same unknown number that had been texting them before. 

 

_Parley?  -SH_

He took one last drag from his cigarette, then dropped it and smashed it with his heel. The answer came almost immediately.

 

_Now why would you want to do that, Mr. Holmes?_

_Queen and Country-- and your dear John-- are safe._

_Bravo. My hero._

_All that._

 

Sherlock exhaled. That was all the confirmation he needed that his suspicions were correct. 

The Vulpi-- or at least their leader-- were taunting him. Something else was going to happen. He just had to find out what, and that meant going straight to the fox’s den.  

But first, he needed to make a quick stop.

Pocketing the phone, he turned on his heel and walked briskly down the street. 

 

* * *

John ran across the hot sand at a full clip. He was in full military gear, sixty kilo pack on his back and his rifle slung over his shoulder. The sun was blindingly bright, the azure sky above glinting razors of reflecting light. 

John kept running, despite the burning in his chest. He didn’t stop or glance behind him. He somehow knew, without looking, that his entire unit was gone, and he was the only one left.

John was panting, his booted feet scrambling for purchase and sinking in as he ran up a dune, his rifle in front of him. He finally made it to the top when... he was suddenly in a Tube station. He spun around, only to see that it was completely empty and dark.

It was incongruous. John was still in all his military gear, and he could still feel the heat of the desert sun on his face. He turned on the spot again, trying to get his bearings. Some movement across the station caught his eye. John squinted, trying to see through the dark. Far, far away, he could see Mary, in a wedding dress. John stopped short, utterly confused. 

Then the flames bloomed on all sides, starting to lick the sides of the platform.

“Mary!” he screamed, but no sound escaped his lips. She didn’t turn around.

Why wasn’t she moving? John ran towards her, screaming, telling her to run, but she didn’t seem to hear. He never seemed to get any closer.

Finally, Mary turned around, smiling.  The flames swirled ever closer to her, seeming to have a mind of their own. 

A droplet of sweat rolled down from under his helmet and down his nose as John ran. Horrified, he yelled, “Mary! Get out!”

She smiled at him again, turning her head to the side, then glancing to his right. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sherlock, running towards him.

“Sherlock! Save Mary!” Sherlock didn’t seem to hear. Wordlessly, he grabbed John and started dragging him away. “NO!” John yelled. 

Mary was looking at John, still smiling widely, but her smile was somehow horrifying.  The flames were circling her on all sides until she was obscured from view. 

John woke with a start, sitting straight up in bed. He was covered in cold sweat, and he felt… woozy.  

He put his head in his hands, trying to will himself to stop shaking. He turned towards Mary, whom he almost undoubtedly had woken by yelling during the nightmare, but she wasn’t there. John stared at the empty bed in front of him.

“Mary?” John called out tentatively. She didn’t answer.

He swung his legs over to the side of the bed, and when he stood, he couldn’t stand quite straight on his feet. It was like he had been drugged. He would have thought it was left over from when the Vulpi drugged him earlier, but this was different. It must have had some kind of hallucinogen effect, because the nightmare had felt so real. He stood for a moment, catching his breath before he shuffled out to the living room.

Mary was nowhere to be seen. Panic slammed into his stomach. 

Had she been kidnapped? Had they drugged him in his sleep and then took her?

Cursing under his breath, John strode back to his bedside table, looking for his Sig, which he usually kept unloaded in the drawer.

It was gone.

 

* * *

Sherlock crouched in the shadows of an alleyway, watching, his leg bouncing anxiously. From his vantage point he could see at least four CCTV cameras on the boulevard, not to mention the half-dozen private closed circuit cameras on the building across from him. 

There were at least two armed guards at the entrance disguised as bouncers. He could hear the loud throbbing base of the music from the nightclub, like the beating of a pulse. Sherlock ran his fingernails over his bottom lip, contemplating. There was an alleyway directly to the left, with large dustbins obscuring most of the corridor from view. 

Making a decision, he straightened up, pacing back and forth.

After a few minutes, a woman with long dark hair (and a hat sticking out of her coat pocket) came into view, chatting on her phone. When she had almost come parallel with him, Sherlock took out his own phone, pretending to text, and walked directly towards her.

As he bumped into her, Sherlock grabbed the hat and shoved it in his own pocket. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” he said quickly, cracking his best flirtatious smile while managing to look sheepish at the same time. She turned to glare at Sherlock, but when she saw his face, she relaxed.

“Oh, um… it’s fine.” She blushed, turning and walking quickly away.

Sherlock pulled the hat (dark grey, wool knit) over his mop of curls, tucking the ends in. He turned his coat collar down and slouched, changing his gait. As he walked by a garbage can, he picked up a bottle that was wrapped in a paper bag.  

He headed towards the nightclub, swaying, just slightly, on his feet. He pretended to take a swig from the bottle as he stepped into the street, and was promptly nearly hit by a car. Threw up his hands at the driver, affecting indignation. The driver appeared to yell some obscenities at him, throwing his hands up as well. Sherlock shrugged, zig-zagging the rest of the way across, ignoring the bouncers, and wandered out of their sight over to the alley. Glancing over, he could see a guard outside the back entrance-- also armed. He pretended to pull down his fly and leaned against the wall with one hand, sighing with relief.

_Three, two, one..._

“Oi, mate,” the guard was behind him. “Move along, eh?”

Sherlock sniffed, glancing over his shoulder. “Hold on a sec, I’m busy,” he slurred. The guard moved closer, about to put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder.

“I said, move _along_!” At that moment, there was a particularly loud swell in the music, and Sherlock turned around swiftly and smashed the bottle over the guard’s head. At the same time, he used his other hand to punch his solar plexus, and the guard doubled over immediately, hardly making a sound. Sherlock took advantage and pressed his thumb into a pressure point on his neck which would render him completely unconscious. Once the body before him had gone slack, Sherlock paused for a moment, listening.  

Nothing. The other guards apparently hadn’t heard.

Sherlock dragged the guard around the side of the dustbins, pausing to shrug him out of his jacket and baseball cap. After he had put them on, he draped his Belstaff over the unconscious man, then for a final touch took his gun and tucked it in the back of his trousers.

Sherlock walked with an aura of purpose towards the back entrance. Glancing backward nonchalantly, he opened the door and went in. 

A long hallway yawned before him. There were stairs leading upward at the end-- obviously to the club itself-- and to the right, a door. It was locked, so he made quick work of it with his picklock. He had finally gotten it open when a man started walking down the stairs before him. Sherlock ducked his head a bit, hiding his face.

“Hey, Mac! Your shift ain’t done for another five minutes!”

“I need to take a fucking leak, just cover for me, alright?” Sherlock said, affecting voice of the guard he had incapacitated. Without waiting for an answer he started walking down the stairs.

The new guard yelled after him: “You’re an arsehole, you know that, Mac?” Sherlock gave him the finger without looking backward.

He moved downward, two, three, four flights, further and further down. The air started to feel damp and cool.

Eventually, he came to a landing. The steady beat of the music overhead was now only a pulse in the background. There was a short hallway in front of him with three doors, one to each side and one in front. 

Sherlock walked forward, opening the door to the front. It opened into a tunnel… a Tube tunnel. 

He heard the click of a gun behind him. 

“Mr. Holmes,” a voice said, “to vat do we owe zis pleasure? Hands up, please.” As Sherlock raised his hands, he tried to diffuse the slight tremor in his right by clenching and unclenching his fist.

Sherlock turned around to see a bearded man in full armour pointing a gun directly at his forehead.  

He raised an eyebrow. “If you’re going to speak, at least use your true voice,” Sherlock said calmly.

A flash of surprise passed over his face, but within a split second the bearded man barked out a laugh. 

“Oh, of course that wouldn’t fool someone like you,” the man said in a posh English accent, flashing a wide grin. His teeth were white and sharp, almost wolf-like.

Sherlock tilted his head. “No. Still not quite there. Closer, though.”

The man rolled his eyes.  

“Gun,” he said, holding out his free hand. Without protest, Sherlock pulled the gun out from behind his trousers and handed it to him.

The man looked it over briefly. “Mac’s gun, hm? I hope you didn’t kill him. He’s one of our best hitmen.”

“Apparently not,” Sherlock said calmly. The man frowned.

“It took you a while longer than I expected,” the man said, still in the English accent. “Still, how did you figure out where we were?” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Please.” As if he would divulge that kind of information.

The man pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Boss wants to see you. She said you would be by soon.”

He opened the door to his right, still training the gun on Sherlock.

Sherlock frowned. _She?_  

“You mean, you’re not the brains of this operation?” Sherlock quipped, covering his mistake.  

“In,” the man said simply, tilting his head towards the door. Sherlock obeyed, walking forward without dropping his hands. It was an office, sparsely but expensively furnished. It could have been the office of a CEO if it hadn’t been in the sub-cellar of a nightclub.

There was a large, black leather executive chair behind the polished mahogany desk, its back turned to Sherlock. The man pushed him over the threshold from behind.

“Leave us,” a familiar woman’s voice said. Why did it sound so familiar?  

Oh… _no_ … 

“But--” 

“ _Now._ ”  

The bearded man bit back a retort, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. Sherlock dropped his hands. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

“How long, Mary?” he said evenly.

The chair swiveled around. 

"Hello, Sherlock," Mary said, smirking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on tumblr for updates, ficlets, and johnlock metas at astudyinrose.tumblr.com.


	5. The Slow Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to johnwatsonology for being the best beta I could have imagined.

It was Mary, but it wasn’t Mary. 

She wore black armour-plated gear from head to toe, including gloves, and she had a gun trained on him. It wasn’t her clothing, though, that was the most drastic change in her appearance. Her features were different, somehow, as if she had been emulating a soft facade for so long that they had hardened into jagged edges when she dropped it. 

Sherlock’s mind whirled, his thoughts chasing after each other too quickly to discern one from another. _How had I not seen this coming? If she’s the head of the Vulpi, why would she risk being so close to me? What’s the endgame? She’s been with John this whole time. Why him?_ He simultaneously sifted back through all the deductions he had made about her, sorting through them piece by piece like grains of sand-- until he saw it.

All the way back at the very beginning. They were standing outside the diner, and Mary had said she would help him reconcile with John. 

Embedded among dozens of other deductions, such as _cat lover, size 12, liberal, disillusioned…_ was _liar_.

Sherlock had seen it, and he had ignored it. In his desperation for John to be happy, he had blinded himself to it.  

He exhaled deeply, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his chest. John would be devastated. Mary was the one person who he thought was safe, normal-- the one person he loved above all others-- and she was this. 

Mary’s eyes roved up and down his body, lingering on the jacket and cap. “You certainly dressed down for the occasion.” Her eyes glinted in the low light.

Sherlock stood completely still. The only thing he could see, highlighted all around her body, was _liarliarliarliarliarliar…_

He tried to temper the thoughts racing through his head. “It was a bit of a gamble, don’t you think? Being so close to me though being with John?” he said casually. 

Mary tilted her head, squinting at him. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘keep your friends close, your enemies closer’? Anyway, your vast powers of intellect failed him. You never even noticed. You can be really thick when it comes to John Watson, you know that? But then, the same could be said of him about you.” 

“So, apart from planning the wedding, you’ve been moonlighting as the head of a major terrorist organization? How ever do you juggle all of that?” 

“Well, aren’t you _clever_ this evening?” Mary sneered. “Sit down,” she said, motioning toward the chair in front of the desk with the gun. “Let’s have us a little chat, shall we?” 

As he walked over to the chair, Sherlock glanced at the gun: it was John’s Sig.

“Surely you have enough disposable income to purchase your own firearm instead of stealing John’s,” Sherlock said as he sat. He took off the baseball cap, ruffling his hair with one hand. 

“What, this?” Mary said, turning the gun to one side. She watched him for a moment, contemplating. 

“Well, as I’m sure you know, there are no coincidences.” Her smile widened, but it wasn’t as warm as her smile normally was; instead, it was chilling. Machiavellian. 

Sherlock sat back, steepling his fingertips over his lips and regarding her for a moment. Mary obviously had a specific reason for taking John’s gun, but she wasn’t letting on. He decided to change tacks. 

“So, you were the ‘leak,’” he said. “There wasn’t a bug on my phone. You told me about Fawkes because I wasn’t adhering to your timeline. You had someone text your own phone to tell me where to go.”

Mary chuckled. “I thought you would have figured it out by then, but it took a little push to get you really going. Honestly, you’re _so_ predictable.” She sat up, deepening her voice to mock Sherlock’s. “ _John’s in danger! I must solve it!_ ” 

She laughed again, sitting back in her chair. “You’re such a drama queen.”

Sherlock chewed his bottom lip. “You set up the half-hearted attack on Parliament and kidnapped John to distract me from the real attack, because I only expected one diversion, not two.”

Mary nodded. “Precisely.” 

“What I don’t understand is… why John? Why did you put up that facade and make him fall in love with you?”

Mary clucked her tongue a few times and affected a pout.  “Ah, I’m disappointed, Sherlock. I thought you were smarter than this.”  

He paused. “Leverage.” 

“Close. But that’s not the only reason. Once we found out that you were still alive-- which was extremely inconvenient, by the way-- I moved into ‘position.’ We couldn’t have you ruining ten years’ worth of plans. I knew your idiot of a brother would bring you into this eventually. You should be flattered, really. You’re the only one who could stop me, so I had to be one step ahead of you every time.” 

Mary stood up, keeping the gun trained on him as she walked around his chair. She was like a predatory cat circling her prey. “I could have had someone else do the ‘dirty work’ for me, of course, but making the move on John myself just seemed more efficient. And you know what they say, if you want something done right…” she said in a singsong voice.

She leaned against the desk, very close to Sherlock. “We originally had another target in mind, but actually, John is even better. This way I’m killing several birds with one stone.”

Sherlock sat back, placing his hands in his lap and continuing to watch her with a neutral expression. “Which ‘birds,’ exactly?”

Mary frowned. For a split second, her eyes unfocused and her cold exterior flickered like a flame. It vanished almost instantaneously, and she was a hard shell again.  

She swallowed, notably dropping the volume of her voice. “Let’s just say, some people who deserve what’s coming to them. John is an asset, a pawn if you will. In this case, the ends justify the means.”

Sherlock stared at her for a moment, trying to see through the layers of her deception and find the small kernel of truth. It was like searching blindly in the dark.

“Ah, Mary. You fell prey to sentiment,” he said quietly. “You actually came to love him.”

Mary quirked up an eyebrow, then she laughed again. It was a harsh sound, grating against Sherlock’s skull. 

“Not even close. As you once said, love is a chemical defect found in the losing side. I would never let my heart rule my head. Not like _you_.”  

Sherlock’s forehead furrowed. Mary had shown him her tell; she was hiding something, some emotion, but he couldn’t discern exactly what it was. 

There was so much she wasn’t saying, but Sherlock couldn’t read her. It was as if she could completely wipe herself of any readable characteristics if she so chose, which in itself was telling. There were only a very few organizations-- mostly clandestine-- in the entire world where she could have learned that. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said smoothly.

“Oh give up already, it’s just getting annoying at this point.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, continuing to watch her with a cool gaze. Mary rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You _still_ won’t admit it? You two, I swear. Why else would you have gone back to _that_?” she sneered, looking pointedly at Sherlock’s leg, which he had been bouncing uncontrollably. 

With a huge effort, he stilled it, not moving a muscle in his face. Mary raised an eyebrow.  

“You’re jittery and you’ve been grinding your teeth. You’re speaking slowly, but it’s obviously deliberate. Not to mention the slight tremor in your right hand. It doesn’t take a _genius_ to see it.”

Sherlock clenched his right fist involuntarily, then released it, contemplating her. She was attempting to get a rise out of him, but he wouldn’t take the bait.

“So what now, exactly?” Sherlock said after a moment, turning his head to look straight ahead. “What’s the real attack?” 

Mary smiled again, completely in her element. Ignoring his question, she reached out to run her free hand through his hair. Sherlock continued to look stubbornly forward, managing not to flinch. “You have amazing hair, you know. You are a very attractive man. And smart. Such a waste.”  

Suddenly, Mary grabbed his chin, forcing him to look upward. Her other hand still pointed the gun at his chest.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude not to look someone in the eye when they’re talking to you?” she said so softly it was almost a whisper. He glared icily up at her, remaining taciturn. 

Mary stroked his cheek lightly. “It was unbelievably easy to make John fall in love, you know. He was completely heartbroken when you died, and I knew exactly how to fill the hole in his heart. He was so eager to let someone fix him, just like you once did. And he was so, so broken, Sherlock. The broken toy soldier _._ ” 

She leaned forward until her lips were just barely brushing his ear. “Do you want to know what he’s like in bed? Some things might surprise you. I can see where he got the nickname ‘Three Continents Watson.’ He can be rather… insatiable.”

She leaned back slightly, smirking. Sherlock didn’t move a muscle, though it felt like his blood was curdling.

Mary heaved a long-suffering sigh, dropping her hand. “You’re no fun.”

She walked over to the shelf, picking up two more guns, pausing to twist on silencers, then holstered them.

“You never answered my question,” Sherlock said, clenching and unclenching his right hand again while she had her back turned. 

“Oh, fine. I suppose I can give you a few hints, since you’re about to die and all,” Mary said in an offhand way, as if she were talking about going to the shop. 

 _About to die?_  

 _John._  

Sherlock glanced at the Sig. “Mary…”

She followed his gaze. “Ah, you’re finally catching on now, eh?”

Sherlock’s hands tensed on the arms of the chair. “Leave him out of this. You have me. Just don’t hurt John.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. That was the entire plan, after all.” Mary checked her watch. “Aha, it’s just about time. Let’s go for a walk, shall we?” 

Mary held out her hand. “My phone, please.” Sherlock hesitated, then silently obliged.

She indicated for him to stand, walking in front of her, and pointed towards the door to the tunnel. Once they had reached the threshold, she dropped her phone with total nonchalance. 

“Okay, let’s go.” He stared at her for a moment, then started forward.

  

* * *

John ran out into the street, looking in every direction before he finally spotted a CCTV camera. For the first time, he regretted having thrown away the many business cards Mycroft had given him. This was a last resort.

He held the sheet of paper he had been holding up over his head. The CCTV camera turned to point directly at him, which, bizarrely, moved a slight bit up and down-- like it was nodding. 

Heart pounding, John nodded back. He leaned against the gate across from his flat.

Within minutes, a black car slid into view and the window rolled down.

“How can I help you, John?” Mycroft said, his face a stern mask.

John dropped the paper (on which he had written _SOS. URGENT._ ), striding over to the car and getting in.

As they started moving, Mycroft started to speak, but John held up his hand to stop him.  

“I’m assuming you have access to GPS capabilities on civilian phones?” John asked tersely.

Mycroft nodded succinctly. 

“I need you to track Mary’s. She’s missing."

 

* * *

Sherlock made his way slowly down the tunnel with Mary following him. They had been walking for at least twenty minutes in complete silence. It appeared to be an abandoned Tube line, and though he racked his brain, he couldn’t seem to remember it being on a map.

Mary chuckled. “You’re trying to figure out which line this is, aren’t you?”

He paused for a moment before admitting, “The thought had crossed my mind, yes.”  

“Old Tube line and station, built but never finished. It was never opened to the public. Happens to be just below--”

Sherlock did a quick calculation of their trajectory and their original location, before he took a deep breath. “Ten Downing Street.”

“Yep.” 

Sherlock stopped short, turning around. Mary raised her eyebrows.

“You’re going to kill the Prime Minister.”  

She laughed. “Wrong. So, so wrong.”  Mary tilted her head, slightly, looking at him. 

“You know, you really don’t look quite as… intimidating, without that coat of yours. Too bad it’s currently gracing the trash cans out back.” 

Sherlock stepped backward, involuntarily. Trash cans. Not _dust bins._ Trash cans was the American term. 

In the chatter, they had said something about Eagles, which was the symbol of the American government.

He licked his lips before speaking. “You’re American.”

“Oh yes, very good,” she said, beaming at him like a mother who was proud of her child for saying something clever. Her voice had morphed into a plainly American accent. Sherlock’s eyes wandered up and down her form.  

“CIA?” 

Mary rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“Non-official covert operative then. Black ops.”  

“Why would you think I’m actually affiliated with the American government?” 

Sherlock paused for a second. “Your ability to morph your characteristics, accent, posture and facial expressions to any given situation. You have a profound ability to lie to one of the most perceptive people in the world-- that’s me by the way-- without breaking a sweat, for months on end. All of this points to extensive training, and very few governments in the world train their operatives this well. Your gear is above military grade. Not to mention some of the obvious symbolism in the chatter.”

Mary’s mouth crooked up into a half-grin. “All true, but I still could have severed ties long ago and stolen the gear. After all, I’m the head of a terrorist organization, am I not? I could have planted the chatter just to throw you off.” She walked over to the side of the tunnel, where there was a roughly-hewn door. She opened it, and crooked her head toward it. “In.”

Sherlock ducked in before her to find crudely-carved steps leading upwards as far as he could see. 

Mary didn’t wait for him to ask. “It was an extra escape hatch, originally, for the Prime Minister, as a backup plan for other escape routes. The plans were dissolved after they realized that having a Tube station as an escape route wasn’t the best idea. They had the entire place walled off. We had to do some very discreet blasting to get down here. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you.”

“What are you doing, Mary?” Sherlock said quietly. “If your target isn’t the Prime Minister, why the dog and pony?”

Mary smiled. “You really should pay more attention to the news, you know. Otherwise you would know that the Prime Minister isn’t the only one at Downing Street today. Now _move_.” 

Sherlock pressed his lips together thinly and started to move upward with her behind him. 

 

* * *

John stared at the building across the street. “This can’t be it.” 

Mycroft shifted in his seat. “I assure you, this is where Mary’s phone is located at this very second. The signal is weak, so it must be below ground.”

It was a nightclub. When John had woken up to find her gone, he had assumed she’d been kidnapped. After all, he’d been drugged, hadn’t he?

Now he didn’t know what to think. Mary had left his bed in the middle of the night to go to a _nightclub?_ Or was she being held against her will?  

“Where’s Sherlock?” John asked quietly. _  
_

“I haven’t seen or heard from him since I left the Angel Street Station. There was some CCTV footage of him walking near here some time ago, but then he disappeared. His phone was destroyed, so I have no way of tracking him. I believe he is trying to avoid detection.”

_Don’t ask._ _Just focus on Mary._

But John’s lips moved without his bidding. “Danger night?” he asked. It came out sounding strangled.

Mycroft paused, obviously weighing his words carefully. “What exactly did you say to him?” 

Feeling like his entire body was ragged at the edges, John recounted what he had said to Sherlock. He stared pointedly at Mycroft’s feet, feeling the flush rise to this throat as he felt the sting of his own words. It all seemed so much worse in retrospect.

When John was finished, he glanced upward. He expected Mycroft to be angry, but instead he looked at John with what almost looked like pity. “Considering that, I don’t doubt that it is a danger night. I wouldn’t have left him if I had realized.” 

John’s brow furrowed, and he ran his hand over his face. He had been too harsh in the heat of the moment. It was all just too painful, the way Sherlock had left him, how he had lied… all of it had twisted together in his mind.  

Horrified, John remembered Sherlock’s face, the essence of devastation, when John had told him to stay away from them. At the time, he had been so angry that he didn’t care.  

 _Oh god, Sherlock._ He could be shooting up at this very moment, and it was John’s fault. 

He couldn’t think about that now. He had to find Mary.

John remained silent for another moment, his hand over his eyes, then sat up straight. Clearing his throat and composing himself, he said, “Is there any reason to believe that this could be the headquarters of that terrorist organization?” 

Mycroft frowned. “The Vulpi?”

“Er, I think. Whoever tried to blow up Parliament and barbecue me. I’m assuming that’s them.” 

Mycroft turned to look out the window, twirling his umbrella with one hand. “Yes, the Ardens Vulpi are the ones who kidnapped you. As to whether this is their headquarters, only my brother would be able to tell you that. However, I can have backup here in a matter of minutes--” 

“No,” John said quickly. “If it’s the same guys who kidnapped me, Mary might not _have_ minutes. Besides, the second a bunch of your men rush in there guns blazing, they will know something’s up, and who knows what they might do. I’m going in now. Alone.”

Mycroft’s eyes snapped over to his, and John could tell he was about to argue, but something in John’s eyes stopped him. Mycroft’s steely gaze evaluated him for a moment, then he nodded.  

As John made to leave the car, Mycroft stopped him. “John, wait.” 

When John turned back, Mycroft held out a gun. It was almost identical to the Sig that had gone missing from his drawer. John didn’t even bother to ask how he had known about that.

“You might be needing this,” Mycroft said. His eyes held usual seriousness and pomposity, but also a tiny hint of admiration. 

“I’ll have special forces right behind you, but be careful. They will undoubtedly try to search you when you go in. And, John…” Mycroft averted his gaze, fiddling with his umbrella handle.  

“Yes?” John prompted impatiently. 

Mycroft raised his head, and his eyes were suddenly and uncharacteristically filled with sorrow. “I hope you and Sherlock can reconcile, but in the meantime… I’ll look for him.” 

John paused, then nodded, tucking the gun in the back of his trousers and starting toward the club.

  

* * *

Sherlock finally reached the top level of the hidden corridor, where there was a small landing with a locked and armed door in front of him. Completely unfazed, Mary pulled out a keycard and opened it.

Sherlock looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Whose is that?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She shoved him in front of her through the door, and they emerged into a cellar.

Mary pulled him to the edge of the room, where shelves of canned goods were stored. “Okay, Sherlock, I’m sorry to say it but… this is the end of the line for you.” 

He needed to keep her talking, to stall her a bit longer. Mycroft and John were certainly on their way by now.

Sherlock leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “Who is it, Mary? Who’s the target?” 

Mary chewed her bottom lip, evaluating him. Finally, she seemed to make a decision. She smiled crookedly and said, “The President.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. It was far more ambitious than he had originally imagined. “ _Yours_?” 

She rolled her eyes again. “Of the United States, yes. But he’s not _mine_. You can be truly obtuse, sometimes. I’m starting to think that you’re really not the genius everyone says you are. Or those drugs are turning your brain to mush.  I planted the idea in your head on purpose. _Trash cans_. Really?” 

“Double bluff.” Sherlock ground his teeth together. 

She laughed at his expression. “Well, yeah, you should have realized that’s my ‘thing’ by now. Anyway, you were right about some of it. Unofficial black ops, all that. Just the wrong country.”

Mary prowled around the small room, picking up objects and putting them back down with complete calm. “We have infiltrated far more levels of government than you could believe. This has been years in the making. So many moles, bribes, and pieces of blackmail. Quite the operation.”

Sherlock racked his brain. The endgame was to kill the American president while he was under the protection of the Prime Minister, in his own home. But why?

His hand was trembling again, so he clenched it into a fist. “Why here? Why now?”

While Mary kept the gun trained on him, she pulled a cigarette from the pack in her pocket. Lighting it one-handed, she took a drag before answering. 

“He has been in the UK for several days having talks with the PM, but he was called into an ‘emergency session’ tonight, in the middle of the night. Only half a dozen people in the PM’s household even know he’s here right now, and half of them are mine.” She smiled smugly. 

“They should have everything ready for me up there within a few minutes. His Secret Service will be neutralized and my path will be clear.”

Sherlock frowned. “You can’t honestly think you’re going to get away with this, do you? Killing the leader of the free world? It’s a suicide mission.” 

Mary shrugged, tapping the ashes off the end of her cig. “I left my phone in the tunnel entrance, and John should have asked your brother to track it by now. Considering when the drug I injected him with should have worn off, he should be here in--” she checked her watch, “--about ten minutes. Just long enough for you to bleed out in his arms and for me to finish upstairs, then make my escape, locking the door behind me with John inside. Luckily, he’s about the same height as me, and I added some layers for bulk. And of course I’ll put this on.” She held up a black face mask.

Sherlock watched her, silently, his eyes widening in horror. 

Mary smirked. “Now you’re getting it. John’s fingerprints are all over this gun. I have spent a considerable amount of time creating an alternate identity for him… namely, to make him appear to be an English assassin. Lions and Eagles, remember?” 

All the pieces were starting to fit together. The Lion was the symbol of England. 

 _“The fox will release the lion from its den.”_  

Sherlock exhaled. “You’re trying to start a war between the United States and the UK.” 

Mary raised her eyebrows. “Finally. Took you a while.” She dropped the cigarette, extinguishing it with her heel. 

Unable to stand still any longer, Sherlock turned on the spot, raking his hand through his hair. “The slow burn,” he muttered under his breath. 

A single attack on the UK wouldn’t be devastating enough for the Vulpi. The only way to eliminate two pillars of the western world was to turn them against each other, making it look like an English assassin had murdered the American President. It was brilliant, ruthless, and brutal; and if it was successful, it would be devastating for the entire world. 

Continuing to pace, Sherlock shook his head. “No one will believe that John did this. Mycroft won’t let him take the fall for the assassination.”

Mary cocked her head to the side. “Well, we both know that’s not entirely true.”

Sherlock, stopped short, turning to look at her. “You have something on Mycroft,” he said. 

Mary’s lips slid upward into a grin. “Oh, you’re rather good. I retract my earlier statement, maybe you _are_ a genius. Too bad you’re not on my side, I could have really used someone like you.” 

She checked her watch again and sighed. “It’s time. Any last requests?” 

Sherlock licked his lips. He had tried to keep her talking, but apparently he hadn’t stalled long enough. It was the end of the line. 

“Just one,” he said. 

She raised her eyebrows. 

“Can I have a cigarette?”  

For a brief moment, Mary looked surprised, then she laughed again. “Well, all right, that is sort of… traditional, after all.” She pulled out another cigarette, walking over to hand it to Sherlock.  

He took it from her, letting his hand shake visibly and attempting to look resigned. She pulled out her lighter one-handedly, flipping it open--

\--and at that moment, before she had time to react, Sherlock punched the heel of his hand upward into her nose (breaking it), and knocked the gun to one side. Mary fired into the cement wall and he simultaneously grabbed one of her holstered guns. He pointed it straight at her head just as Mary snapped around with a shriek of rage. 

“You didn’t really think it would be that easy, did you?” Sherlock smirked. “You’re getting rusty. Too much time in the suburbs with John and not enough in the field, I guess.” 

“Fuck you,” Mary said, holding her bleeding nose with one hand but keeping her gun trained on Sherlock.

They stayed completely motionless, guns pointed at each other, for several seconds. It seemed like an eternity. 

Mary exhaled. “Now what, genius?” she said. “If you pull the trigger, so will I. We’ll both die.” 

“The President will be safe. The country will be safe.”He cleared his throat. “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“I didn’t think that a junkie would-be sociopath could be the type of man to die for _Queen and Country_ ,” Mary spat, taunting him. “Anyway, did you really think I didn’t have a contingency plan?” 

Sherlock watched her carefully. She could be bluffing, but it was hard to tell. It was time to use his last bargaining chip. He had to hope that somewhere, deep inside, she did care about John.

“Mary, please,” he pleaded softly, “Don’t do this to John. Do you have any idea what it will do to him if we both die?”

She sighed, shaking her head. “There’s a lot more at work here than you, or I, or John Watson, Sherlock. Anyway, I meant it-- he means nothing to me. I’m not going to stop now. I’ll die first.” 

Their eyes met and the air in the room stilled. Time stretched, milliseconds becoming hours, days. Sherlock’s senses mingled and crossed. He could taste the metal of the gun at his fingertips, hear the inharmonious notes of Mary’s perfume mixed with blood wisping through the air.  

It no longer mattered if he fell prey to sentiment. There was nothing left to lose.  

Though he kept his eyes trained on Mary, Sherlock allowed a small part of himself to withdraw from his surroundings. He felt under the corner nook in the most secret corner of his mind palace, taking out one last memory. It was of John, laughing in the back of a cab, when Sherlock had stolen the ashtray for him at Buckingham Palace.   

_Goodbye, John._

 

In a split second, he realized that no matter who she was or what she had become, he couldn’t kill Mary. He couldn’t do that to John.

Sherlock swallowed, stepping forward. “Mary--” 

“I’m sorry Sherlock, I truly am,” she interrupted. The words were completely incongruous with her expression: a cold mask without remorse. 

Then Mary pulled the trigger.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how this was partially based on V for Vendetta? Stay tuned...
> 
> Follow me on tumblr for updates, ficlets, and other Johnlock metas at astudyinrose.tumblr.com


	6. Cuore In Fiamme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to johnwatsonology (aka Kate) for being the best beta in the entire universe. Now that I've got you I'm never letting you go <3

 

John could already hear the throbbing beat of the music as he walked toward the club. 

In order to get in _and_ to keep his gun, he was going to have to take a gamble. 

He walked with soldierly purpose past the roped line of people, holding his back straight and his head up.

He strode up to the guards and made to walk past them without even glancing upward. “Hey, dude, whaddaya think you’re doing?” one of them asked, grabbing him by the arm.  

“I gotta talk to the boss,” John said. He shrugged out of the grip and stared at him evenly. “It’s urgent.”

The guard looked confused. “The boss?”

John rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Are you really as thick as you look? C’mon mate.”

The two guards looked at each other, having a silent conversation.  

Finally the second man nodded, cocking his head to John and walking into the club. John stared down the first guard for a moment before he followed.  

The smell of too many bodies in too small a space assailed his nostrils almost immediately, and he fought the urge to cringe. Breathing through his mouth, John followed guard number two, weaving through the massive throng of people who were dancing in the near-darkness. The music was overbearingly loud, but there was no discernible melody; it was just a throbbing pulse like a heartbeat in his ears.  

The guard finally broke through the wall of bodies on the far side of the club. He opened a door just a crack, tilting his head towards it. John nodded, slipping through. The guard quickly shut the door behind him. 

The dichotomy between the previous scene and this one was extreme. In front of him was a hallway under fluorescent lights with a few doors, only one of which-- on the far side, to the left-- was open. John walked briskly down the hallway, trying each of the door handles, but they were all locked. He finally came to the open one, which led to a set of stairs. 

As there wasn’t really any other option, he started down, walking as quickly as he could.

 

 

* * *

Sherlock looked downward, slowly, as his gun clattered to the floor. There was a small stain of red starting to bloom on his shoulder. He watched it from an empirical perspective, as if it were an interesting experiment.

“Goodbye, Sherlock,” he heard a singsong voice say from far away. “I could have killed you instantly, of course, but then John wouldn’t be here when you died. This way you’ll have about eight minutes until you bleed out, if I estimate correctly. And I _never_ estimate incorrectly. Give my love to John.” The last lingering notes of her voice echoed through the room. 

Knowing he had to call on his last mental reserves in order to survive, Sherlock retreated into his mind palace. 

Molly appeared, telling him to focus. “You only have about three seconds of consciousness left, and you need to use them,” she said. 

She told him to fall backwards.  

He did.  

There was nothing else he could do. Sherlock retreated into the farthest reaches of himself, in his mind palace, trying to fight the pain, trying to find something comforting.  

John. 

He ran through his mind palace, searching. He frantically pulled open a door, but instead of John, he found Mary in a wedding dress. Without hesitation, she aimed her gun at Sherlock and shot him all over again. 

Agony.  “You’re going to go into shock. There is a hole ripped through you,” Molly said from somewhere behind him. 

Sherlock had to retreat further, further down, past everything else. To the farthest and darkest part of his mind. To the place where he kept… him. 

Sherlock rushed into the tiny, dark room and shut the door behind him. “Control, control,” he told himself. The crouched figure across from him didn’t move. 

“You never felt anything,” Sherlock panted. “How did you never feel?”

“You always feel it Sherlock,” the figure turned to look at him. The visage of Moriarty, bound and chained. “But you don’t have to fear it.”

  

 

* * *

After what felt like an agonizingly long time, John finally made it to the bottom of the stairway. There was another hall, and at the very end a door was open, revealing the darkness beyond.

On the floor near the door was a phone. Mary’s phone. 

He strode over quickly, picking it up and turning on the spot, looking in the rooms to the left and right. 

“Mary?” he called out tentatively.

There was an office in one room, and what looked like an interrogation table in the other… but no Mary. 

Turning towards the tunnel again, John steeled himself and walked forward into the darkness.  

John picked his way down the tunnel, using the phone for light. It was eerie, walking alone through the blackness. Every movement echoed spectacularly in the cavernous space, exactly like the tunnel where the Vulpi had kept him. In fact, it _looked_ exactly like that tunnel, too. 

Eventually John came to an open door in the wall, with more stairs leading upward. There was nothing else around, so he took a chance and started climbing.

At the top there was an armed door, but it was cracked open. It swung shut behind John as he walked through, and he came into what looked like a supply room. He froze.

Sherlock was on the floor, unconscious. He was pale as a sheet, and there there was a scarlet stain on his shoulder. There was also an alarmingly large pool of blood on the floor. 

In a rush, any remaining anger he had held towards Sherlock evaporated, as if it never was.

“Sherlock!” John ran over immediately, checking his vitals. His breathing was shallow and labored and his pulse was very, very weak. 

John tried to rouse him, calling his name, to no avail. What was he even doing here? Did he know where Mary was? A dark pit of fear started to take hold in John’s stomach. If this had happened to Sherlock…

Shaking his head, John switched into army doctor mode. He could only save the patient in front of him; he couldn’t worry about anything else. He ripped the bloodied shirt aside and examined the wound. It looked like a single shot from point-blank range. The bullet was still inside, but it might have hit an artery considering all the blood. There was almost nothing he could do here-- not without medical equipment. John ripped the shirt into shreds and bound it around the shoulder, trying to staunch the blood from flowing as much as possible. 

John tried to call the number Mycroft had given him, but there was no service. He attempted to text “SOS” but that also failed to send. There were very few options left. He had to find help, and he had to do it now. 

John checked the door he had just come through, but it had locked itself again when it shut. John cursed under his breath, striding around the small room until he came to a stairwell on the other side. It led upward into a more well-lit area. John still had no idea where he was, but that was his only option.

He ran back over to kneel beside Sherlock, who was still completely unconscious. 

“Sherlock, you have to hold on. I’m going to get help,” John said, taking his pulse again. It was alarmingly low. Sherlock had lost a lot of blood. Even a shoulder wound like this, which wasn’t normally fatal, could kill Sherlock if he didn’t get medical attention quickly. God knows how long he had been lying there before John had come in. 

“Bloody _hell_ ,” John swore, putting one hand on Sherlock’s forehead. “I’ll come back for you,” John said, then tore himself away. He hesitated at the door, taking out his gun and checking to make sure it was loaded, then running up the stairs toward the light. 

When John reached the landing, he blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted. He was in a plush hallway with extremely tasteful decor. It looked almost like...

He was in Downing Street.  

_How…?_

There was an armed man on the opposite end of the corridor, pointing his gun at John. John raised his hands, placing his gun down carefully. If the PM’s guard thought he was an assailant, they would shoot him on sight. 

“Help, please, I need help!” John said. “There’s an injured man down there.” 

The guard didn’t move, keeping his gun on John. 

John hesitated, suddenly wary. His senses heightened as they only did on a battlefield. Something wasn’t right. 

“You’re here a bit early, Dr. Watson,” the armed man said, opening the door behind him. “In.”

 _He knew my name._ “Where is everyone?” John said slowly. “Where’s the Prime Minister?”

“In there, now,” the man said, ignoring his question.

John glanced around casually as he walked forward. As he came up to a hallway on his left, he stopped short. There were a dozen men-- obviously the personal guard of the PM and what looked like U.S. Secret Service-- dead. Piled in a heap as if they were discarded rags.

 _Oh, god._  

These people had taken over Downing Street. They must have been the ones who had shot Sherlock. John turned slowly to look at the armed man again.

“Now,” the guard repeated. John raised his hands even higher in defeat, walking forward into the room. The guard followed. 

In the middle of the room, there was a masked figure in all black, holding a gun to the forehead of a man on his knees (John couldn't see his face). There was another armed man in the corner who was currently crouched over what looked like the Prime Minister. John started toward him immediately, but the man put his hand up to stop him, standing and pointing his gun at John.  

“He’s fine. Just unconscious. You’re early. I hadn’t expected you for a few more minutes,” he heard a woman’s voice say from behind him. It sounded like... 

John turned toward the figure in all black, and his eyes fell on the kneeling man. 

It was the President of the United States. 

“Jesus,” John swore, but didn’t move. “Who the fuck are you people? Sir, are you alright?”

President Nicholson didn’t take his eyes off the person in black, but he nodded, slightly.

“Who am I? Well, you already know,” the woman’s voice said. John froze.

“No,” John said, almost at a whisper.

Keeping the gun to the president’s forehead, the figure took off the mask.

It was Mary. 

John couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. The ground was tilting under him.

Mary cocked her head, gazing at him. Her eyes, which he had looked at so many times before, were now cold and unfeeling.

“Hello, John,” she said tersely. Turning to one of the armed men, she ordered, “Fox, put him in the clothes.”

Fox.So these _were_ the same men who had kidnapped him.  

One of the men in black nodded, then moved towards John, holding both of his arms. The other man began stripping him of his clothes with brutal efficiency.

“Mary, what are you…” John started to say, fighting his rising nausea in order to speak. “What’s going on?

“Let’s just say I’m not who you think I am,” Mary said quietly.

John swallowed loudly. “Who are you, then?” 

Mary raised her eyebrows. “As if I would tell you?”

“Please, whoever you are, let’s just talk about this, we can--” President Nicholson began in a calm tone, but before he continue Mary whipped him across the face with the gun. 

“Quiet,” she spat. “If you make one more sound, I’ll fucking shoot you right now.” He recovered himself quickly, looking up at her coldly.

The men were now dressing John in clothes identical to Mary’s. 

“What-- what are you doing?” John stammered. 

“I should think it’s rather obvious,” Mary said condescendingly. “You are going to be the new me. I knocked the Prime Minister out, and since I was wearing a mask, he would never know that it wasn’t actually _you_. When he wakes up the President will be dead. Your body will be nearby, dressed exactly like me and holding this gun. No one will know the difference.” 

John watched the men dressing him with growing dread. “What about them then?” He tried to maintain a sense of calmness, but it wasn’t exactly working.

“They got rid of those SS outside so that I could have the way clear after I took care of Sherlock.” 

John snapped up to look at her. “ _You_ shot Sherlock?” 

“Of course I shot him,” Mary said with a cruel smile. It hit John like a knife to the heart. _No. This wasn’t happening. No._  

“I had to create a scenario in which this--” she tilted her head toward President Nicholson, “-- would make sense, and I needed Sherlock dead.  So I made it look like you shot Sherlock because he tried to stop you. Then you came up here, shot the President, and then yourself. I can just see the headlines: ‘English Assassin Murders U.S. President.’ The whole Western World will go up in flames, and the Vulpi will be victorious."

“You… what?” John felt like he had been dropped into a dream, a nightmare. “You’re one of the terrorists?”  

Mary rolled her eyes. “Really, John, do keep up.” 

Mary checked her watch. “Sherlock is probably dead by now. It’s just about time.” She glanced over at John, who was now clothed exactly as she was, and nodded with approval. Then she cocked her gun.

“Why, Mary? Why are you doing this?” John pleaded, his voice cracking. His entire life, everything he thought he knew, was being ripped apart like fabric at the seams. 

Mary glanced at him again. “If you were going to live, I would have told you to ask Mycroft.” 

“ _Mycroft_?” That was a name John would never have expected to hear in this context. 

Mary’s eyes faltered, just the tiniest bit. John wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t been scrutinizing her every movement, trying to find ‘his’ Mary hidden within the assassin who stood before him. 

“Yes,” Mary’s voice lowered to an almost serpentine level. “You want to know why I’m doing this? Who I am? Well, _he_ created me.”

John was still trying to digest this as she turned away from him again. 

“You know, I’ve always loved Andrea Bocelli,” Mary said, running the barrel of the gun down the president’s cheek. John could tell that he was making an effort not to wince. “He always seemed to capture the perfect sentiment, the perfect melody for a moment in time.” 

She forced President Nicholson’s chin upward so that he had to look directly into her eyes. John took advantage of her momentary distraction to survey the room, trying to find a way to prevent this from happening. However, the only weapons nearby were being wielded by the men beside him.

“Time to say goodbye,” Mary sang softly, pressing the barrel to the president’s forehead. He closed his eyes. 

John’s eyes flicked over the two men. The guard on the right was obviously highly trained, holding his gun in a way that John wouldn’t be able to take it from him. 

The other one, however, was watching Mary instead of John, and he was only holding his gun with one hand. Sloppy. 

He only had one chance.  

In a flash John stood, grabbing the gun from the man on the left and elbowing him in the stomach at the same time. As he doubled over, John brought the gun down on the back of his head, rendering him unconscious, then quickly pointed the gun at the other armed man’s face.

Panting, he turned to look at Mary, who had watched these proceedings with calm collection. She was still pointing the gun at the president’s forehead.

“What now, Dr. Watson?” she said silkily. 

 

 

* * *

Sherlock was collapsing into his own mind. There was almost nothing left of him.

“You’re going to love being dead, Sherlock,” the mind palace version of Moriarty said into his ear. “No one bothers you.” 

Sherlock felt everything fading, going black. It was almost calming.  

“John’s the one I worry about the most,” Moriarty was saying, twirling around maniacally. “That girlfriend, oomph.” 

There was more and more emptiness engulfing him. Every part of him-- his mind, his being-- was disintegrating. It would be so easy to just let himself die. He would finally be at peace. Away from the pain, the loss, the heartbreak.  

He could finally forget about John telling Sherlock to stay away from him. Forget the fact that John had chosen Mary. 

“You’re letting him down, Sherlock. John Watson is definitely in danger.”

A small, tiny voice was like a pinprick in the back of his mind. _Sherlock, you have to get up._

_No. I want to rest. I’m so tired. Haven’t I done enough?_

_You can’t rest,_ the voice said. _John is in danger. You can’t let go. We would never do that to John_. 

_I'm so tired._

_Get up. Now. You have to save him._  

With immense effort, he started to rouse himself. The image of Moriarty started flapping about. “Wait, are you getting better? Was it something I said?”

From the bowels of his mind, Sherlock scratched, he climbed. He clawed his way back up, up to the realm of consciousness.

“ _SHERLOCK!_ ” he heard Moriarty scream. 

But he was already gone. He climbed until the light was surrounding him on all sides. 

Feeling like he was breaking the surface after being underwater, Sherlock woke with a gasp. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable, burning as if it were being held against an open flame. He winced, unable to move for a moment. His shoulder appeared to have been bandaged a bit, which had stopped him from losing more blood. 

 _John?_  

Sherlock glanced around the room, but it was empty. He sat up with some difficulty. 

He couldn’t get up, not all the way. Considering the amount of blood on the floor, he had lost a few pints. If he stood, he would undoubtedly faint immediately, not to mention the fact that his lung was probably going to collapse. The best he could hope for would be to struggle across the room by crawling. 

So Sherlock crawled, putting all of his weight on his right shoulder. Every movement was agony. He broke out in a cold sweat almost immediately, and that was before he even reached the stairs.

Looking upward, Sherlock felt defeated. There were too many; it would be impossible in his current state. He collapsed on the landing, fighting the waves of nausea and unconsciousness that threatened to overtake him.

As he lay there, he heard the small voice in the back of his mind. _We wouldn’t do that to John. You have to get up_. If this killed him, in the end, at least he could still save John. 

Sherlock looked upward. There was a railing to the side which he could use to pull himself up with his good arm. With renewed determination, Sherlock struggled for what felt like hours up the stairs. When he finally reached the top, he could hear murmuring voices from down the hall. 

There was a Sig just like John's on the ground near the door. Sherlock picked it up and kept sliding himself across the floor, towards the voices. It was eerily quiet otherwise, and the hallway reeked of death. 

When Sherlock finally made it to the slightly-open door, he listened carefully. 

“What now, Dr. Watson?” Mary’s voice said. Sherlock looked through the crack. John was dressed all in black-- exactly like Mary-- and there was one man unconscious on the floor. John was pointing a gun at another man in black, who in turn had his gun on John. 

Mary was standing a bit away from them, her gun pointed at the president’s forehead.

“I’ll kill them if you don’t let President Nicholson go,” John said, his voice liquid steel. 

Mary laughed. “Do you really think I care one whit if you kill either of them? Go ahead.” John’s face faltered. 

Sherlock lifted the gun to the crack, considered the trajectory, and fired. 

There was a loud thump, and a gunshot simultaneously ripped through the door above him at eye-height. Luckily, however, Sherlock was still on the ground. He pushed the door open fully and trained his gun on Mary, who had apparently tried to shoot the hidden assailant before pointing the gun back at the president’s head. She was now looking down at him with complete disgust.  

The man who had been next to John now lay on the floor, shot through the chest. 

“My god, Sherlock--” John started forward, but he stopped, glancing at Mary. He was twiddling the gun in his hand, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do with it.

“Are you alright?” John asked, looking up and down Sherlock’s form. “How are you even--” 

“Fucking hell, you are supposed to be _dead_ ,” Mary spat. “I nicked your artery, I’m sure of it. Why don’t you ever just actually _die_?”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Sherlock quipped. “Now, Mary, be a good girl and let the president go.”

Mary laughed again. “I don’t think so,” she said, “I told you, I’d die before stopping now.” 

“Who _are_ you?” John blurted out. Sherlock’s eyes snapped up to look him again. John’s whole body radiated pain.  

Mary rolled her eyes. “The woman you know as ‘Mary Morstan’ is a fiction. She never existed. Not in name, or in body.” Her eyes glinted with a mania that she had obviously kept carefully hidden for a long, long time. 

“None of it was real? Any of it?” John’s eyes were glinting with sharp edges of agony. Of loss. 

Mary shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint,” she said in a sarcastic rendition of Sherlock’s earlier phrase.

“John,” Sherlock said, quietly. “She planned all this from the beginning.”

“You _knew_?” John’s eyes flicked to him, horrified.

“Not until I found her in the Vulpi’s headquarters. She fooled me too.” Sherlock held John’s gaze, attempting to comfort him, but it was obviously failing.

“But _she_ wasn’t supposed to be like that,” John rasped, almost at a whisper, gesturing his gun at Mary.

Sherlock closed his eyes, trying to stave off the pain that was encroaching on all sides. “I know, I know, John. You are abnormally attracted to danger, and she knew that. I’m so sorry.” He reopened his eyes, only to be greeted by John’s ravaged face. “She chose you to carry out her plans.”

“She chose… me?” John choked out. He glanced at Mary. 

She shrugged again. “I chose you for a number of reasons, but yes, that was one of them. You love danger. It’s what you like. It certainly made things easier.”

“But--” John began.

“Sorry, dears, but I’ve had enough of this heart to heart. We are running short on time,” Mary said, her voice dripping with venom. She pressed her gun into the president’s forehead until he winced with pain.  

“I’m sorry, too,” John replied, a single tear falling from the corner of his eye. Slowly, as if the very motion was painful, he raised his gun to point it at Mary. 

Sherlock had to rip his eyes away from John back to Mary. “Now what? You can’t kill all three of us. If you shoot Nicholson, one of us will shoot you. There will still be a witness that John didn’t do all of this.” 

Mary chuckled. “Well, aren’t you clever. But you’re forgetting one thing.” 

Sherlock frowned, scrutinizing her. “Oh?" 

She smiled. “I have two guns.” Mary pulled another gun out of her holster.

Sherlock tried to curtail his rising anxiety. Mary was a psychopath, and she would apparently stop at nothing. He had to hope he could keep her talking until help arrived.

“Pointing that at John isn’t going to help. Your plan will be ruined if he doesn’t die at his own hand.” 

Mary raised her eyebrows. “Whoever said I was going to point the gun at John?” She raised the second gun and pointed it directly at Sherlock. 

All of the air seemed to go out of the room. No one moved.

“So this is what’s going to happen,” Mary said so quietly that they could barely hear her. “John, you are going to shoot the President, and then yourself. If you don’t, I will kill Sherlock right in front of your eyes.”

Another tear crept down John’s cheek, but his jaw was still firm. His cobalt blue eyes were like blocks of ice. “No, Mary, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’ll do this. I know you.” 

“You dont know me at _all_!” Mary screamed, suddenly. John didn’t move a muscle, but his eyes faltered slightly.

“Just let her kill me, John,” Sherlock said without turning to look at him. “I might not make it anyway. Then you can incapacitate her and save the president.”  

“I can’t,” John said, his voice strangled. He remained immobile. 

“Really? It’s going to take more than that? Fine,” Mary said viciously.  

She dropped the gun from the president’s head, starting to move towards Sherlock. 

“Stop,” John said quietly, holding his gun with both hands. His voice held the full force of a soldier whose instincts were awaking from a long slumber. “Drop your weapon, or I _will_ shoot.”

Mary shook her head. “Ah, John, but you won’t. Do you know why?” 

Mary quickly strode the few steps over to Sherlock, easily kicking the gun from his hand in his weakened state. She grabbed him and forced him to his knees. Sherlock winced at the pain, but she paid no attention, pushing the gun right to Sherlock’s temple.  

All the while John watched her, his finger on the trigger. He’d had a clean shot, but it appeared that he was unable to take it.

“Sentiment,” Mary said, grinning devilishly. John gulped. Sherlock could see the conflict in his eyes. 

“Do you really want to see his brains painted all over that wall?” Mary said to John. “I’ve seen that kind of headwound from this range. Pretty brutal.” 

John’s visage was the essence of calm, but the slight trembling in the gun he was pointing at Mary gave him away.

“Mary, please,” he said quietly, plaintively. 

“Talk time’s o-ver,” Mary said in singsong. “Tick tock.” She gestured towards President Nicholson, who was still kneeling on the floor. 

“John, don’t. Let me go,” Sherlock said softly. He was starting to feel the effects of his blood loss, and the room was spinning. He didn’t have much more time before he fell unconscious. 

“I can’t,” John said, his voice cracking. “Not now that…” _Not now that Mary is this._ The unspoken words hung in the air.

“John.” Sherlock almost couldn’t stay awake anymore from the pain. “The wellbeing of the entire country is at stake.”

“Don’t,” John whispered.  

Mary cackled. “Well isn’t this just beautiful, you’re both finally willing to admit what you mean to each other. More than the future of the free world, it seems. Too bad it’s too late.” She smiled, her teeth glinting against her red lips. 

“Do I have your word,” John said, his eyes still locked on Sherlock.

“My word?” Mary said. 

John let his eyes rise to meet hers. “That you will let him go. Once I’ve done this.”

“John, n--” Sherlock started, but Mary clapped her hand over his mouth.  

“Oh, shut up. It’s getting tiresome.” Mary nodded to John. “Yes, you have my word. I won’t harm another hair on his beautiful head.” As if for emphasis, she stroked her free hand through Sherlock’s curls.

His jaw working, John nodded. He walked slowly over to President Nicholson and checked the magazine. Then he pointed the gun to his forehead. 

“I’m so sorry, sir,” John said softly. 

The president’s eyes flicked to Mary, then back to John. “You don’t have to do this, son,” he said.  

John shook his head and cocked his gun. Fighting the drowsiness, Sherlock struggled against Mary. “John!” he tried to yell, but it was muffled by Mary’s hand. 

“Stop it,” Mary warned. 

Sherlock stopped, his breathing heavy, his eyes starting to droop. Black dots began to swim across his vision. The adrenalin rush to save John had kept him conscious until now, but there was only so far his body could actually go. 

“Do it now, John. I’m losing my patience,” Mary said.

John stood silently, his gun to the president’s forehead. He took a deep breath. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said, quietly. 

“Oh? What is that?”  

John turned to look at her. “I texted Mycroft before I came upstairs, and it failed to send. My phone would have tried to resend the message as soon as I had service. Which means he should have been able to track our location at least five minutes ago.” 

For the first time that night, Mary’s eyes widened, staring up at John. Everything was still and silent. 

Then, out of nowhere, there was a gunshot. 

For one long moment, John stared at them in horror, apparently unable to move.

Warm blood started to gush over Sherlock, and at first he thought it was his. He looked up at John, but John’s eyes were locked on Mary.

Mary slumped to the floor with a wound to her head, her face a blank stare. John threw the gun to the side, rushing to her. Unable to keep himself upright, Sherlock crumpled to the ground.  

“Do not move! Drop your weapons!” A deep voice yelled from behind them. 

“Mary, oh god, Mary!” John screamed, ignoring the shouts from down the hallway. He checked her vitals, quickly realizing that she was gone. After one long second, his whole body seemed to go concave. He suddenly seemed so small, so defeated, even old. 

With delicate hands, John picked Mary up, holding her lifeless body in his arms one last time. Then lay her back down, gently. He started wiping the blood from her face, his face contorted with pain, rage, and grief.  

Over John’s shoulder, Sherlock saw President Nicholson rise and pick up John’s gun. He pointed it at the back of John’s head. 

“Mr. President, John would never have shot you.” Sherlock said.

The president looked at him with narrowed eyes. “How do you know?”

“The gun… isn’t loaded,” Sherlock managed to say. “He took out the bullets when he checked the magazine.” President Nicholson’s eyes widened, and he checked the gun. His eyes flicked up to meet Sherlock’s, and he nodded. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, John looked up at Sherlock. The tears streaked down his face, and there was utter devastation in his eyes. Sherlock felt unconsciousness starting to overtake him as the commotion from the hallway moved nearer. 

As the Secret Service started to surround them, shouting orders, John pushed through them and made his way over to Sherlock.  

“Let him through, he’s fine,” the president called out, striding over to the Prime Minister’s unconscious form. “That other young man and the Prime Minister need medical attention, _now_.” 

“Sherlock,” John gasped, his voice ragged. 

“John,” Sherlock said, finding it hard to form the words, “Please. Forgive me.” 

“There is nothing to forgive,” John choked out, his eyes darting all over Sherlock’s body with worry. “Stay with me, Sherlock, we’ll get you to hospital.” 

Sherlock winced. “I think... you may have to restart my heart.” Everything went black.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Andrea Bocelli is an opera singer, and he sings "Time to Say Goodbye," also known as "Con te Partiro." In the original version, it's all sung in Italian, but there have been English translations. That is the song Mary sang to the President when she was about to kill him. 
> 
> You can listen to "Time to Say Goodbye" sung by Bocelli in English (well, the chorus is in English anyway) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9WMIPzd6w
> 
> And you can listen to the Italian version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrfvP11Hbo&feature=kp
> 
> Interestingly, "Con te Partiro" actually doesn't mean "Time to Say Goodbye," it means, "with you I will leave." You know, in case you were wondering.
> 
> 2\. "Cuore In Fiamme" literally means "heart on fire" or "flaming heart" in Italian.


	7. The Phoenix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please thank my beta Kate (johnwatsonology) to infinity and beyond because she makes my fics infinitely better than they were before. Thank you Kate.
> 
> Just a note: V for Vendetta.

 

_V: What was done to me was monstrous._

_Evey: And they created a monster._

 

 

* * *

The long hallway was disconcerting, almost sinister, in the dim half-light. It also seemed… decrepit. The walls were crumbling and paintings were hanging off their mounts. The few pieces of furniture were moth-eaten and covered in dust, and there was a general air of foreboding. 

“Hello?” John called out, his voice echoing through empty rooms.

Holding his gun out in front of him, John walked slowly down the dank hallway. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had forgotten something; he felt on alert, but he couldn’t remember why.

After several minutes, he heard faint lilting notes of music from far away. He stopped, pricking his ears: it was a man singing an opera song in Italian. John furrowed his brow and continued toward the sound.

As he turned a corner, John could see a door cracked open at the end of the hallway. A sliver of light from the doorway illuminated the dark wood floor beneath in pale yellows and golds. Judging by the increase in volume, that was the source of the music. 

Careful not to make any noise, John inched toward the door. Once he reached the opening, he flattened himself against the wall next to it for for a moment, counting to three as if he were doing a raid in Afghanistan. Then he kicked open the door and trained his gun on the room.

But there were no hostiles inside. Instead, on the floor in front of him were the lifeless forms of Mary and Sherlock. Mary’s glassy eyes stared upward and her blonde hair was matted with red. Sherlock’s body was askew, all of his limbs broken as if he had fallen off a building. There was a pool of blood spreading out from beneath his head.  

The music got louder and louder, but John had no idea where it was coming from. He couldn’t move, even to put his hands over his ears, because he couldn’t decide which of them to run to.

  

* * *

John awoke with a start, breathing heavily. It took him a moment to become fully aware of his surroundings: he was in a hospital room, sitting in a chair next to Sherlock’s bed. He could hear the early-morning stirrings of hospital life outside, but inside the enclosed space of the room the only noise was the slow beeping of the monitor. 

His heart still pounding, John ran his hand over his face. _It was just a nightmare. It wasn’t real._  

But reality was almost worse than the dream had been. John rested his elbows on his knees, pressing his face into his hands. Mary. She had lied to him from the very beginning. And now she was gone.

John wasn’t the kind of man to sob or wail in grief. In some ways, that might have been a relief, but instead John’s pain turned in on itself. There was nowhere for it to go. When Sherlock had been ‘dead,’ that pain was like acid eating away at his core, day after day, month after month.

But this wasn’t just death. It was betrayal. 

John shook his head, staring at the floor from between his hands. When Sherlock had been gone, John hadn’t been able to bear it. So, like any good Englishman, John had repressed it. Mary had been the only thing that had brought him back to life… and no matter who she had really been, John had loved her. 

He would have to lock Mary away in a corner of his mind until he could move on from that pain. 

John sat back and adjusted his position in the uncomfortable hospital chair, massaging his neck. He was getting too old to spend the night like that.

He let his eyes run over Sherlock’s unconscious form for the hundredth time that day. He looked peaceful, though his body still had a long way to go in recovery. His pale skin was not much different in color from the bedsheets, and in any other patient it would have alarmed John, but it wasn’t far from Sherlock’s natural pallor. When they had first arrived from Downing Street, Sherlock’s lung had collapsed and the doctors had had to restart his heart. Now he was stable, but he had been unconscious for nearly a day. It wasn’t completely abnormal, though, considering what his body had been through. 

John was still deep in his thoughts when the door opened and Mycroft entered the room. John clenched his jaw briefly, continuing to watch Sherlock as if he hadn’t noticed.

Mycroft hesitated at the doorway before striding over to John. Even though he had just woken up, John suddenly felt very, very tired. He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.  

 _You ordered those men into Downing Street. It was your fault they shot Mary on sight. It was_ _your fault._  

“He’s still stable, I see,” Mycroft said from beside him. When John didn’t answer, Mycroft hesitated for a moment before putting his hand on John’s shoulder. 

“John, I’m so very sorry,” he said quietly. 

It was so uncharacteristic of Mycroft that John felt tears finally starting to form in his eyes. Angrily, he turned to look up, but he could only see the blurred form of the man in front of him.

John’s face must have been the ravaged visage of a man in agony, because Mycroft pressed his lips into an even firmer line-- his normal response when he was uncomfortable.  

He cleared his throat. “No one knew it was her, John. They were ordered to kill the assailant on sight, and her back was turned. There was no way they could have known. Even if they had, they would still have taken the shot. She was about to shoot Sherlock, or force you to murder the President. They had to act.”

“Stop,” John said so softly it was almost a whisper. “Just… _stop_.”

Mycroft let out a short huff of air, his face tightening as if he were the one in pain. After a moment he released John’s shoulder and strode over to the corner of the room, sitting in the other available chair. John returned his gaze to Sherlock, because he couldn’t stand looking at Mycroft.

Seemingly unable to sense that John craved silence, Mycroft cleared his throat again. “I know you might not want to hear this, John, but I think you have the right to know.” 

John exhaled sharply. _The man isn’t going to leave me be, is he?_  

Mycroft paused. “Mary-- that is, the woman you knew as Mary-- was once a British Agent of the highest level. Her name was Alicia Gabrielle Rhodes Abbott." 

John didn’t wait to hear more. He snapped to look at Mycroft in horror. “She was _what_? She--”

In a moment of dawning comprehension, John remembered what Mary had said about Mycroft in those last fateful moments. “ _You want to know why I’m doing this? Who I am? Well,_ _he_ _created me_.” 

Mycroft was watching his reactions. “She told you,” he said, looking surprised.

“Only that you were her ‘creator,’ whatever the fuck that means,” John said bitterly, standing up and starting to pace back and forth, crossing his arms.  

Mycroft remained seated, watching his progress. After a few moments, John stopped and looked at him. “Well? You’re not even going to deny it?” 

Mycroft averted his eyes, twirling his umbrella handle between his fingers. “I don’t deny it,” he said quietly.

John stood still, jutting his chin out in his impatience. 

Mycroft glanced back up at him again, and in a split second his eyes hinted at some unidentifiable emotion-- remorse? It was gone so quickly that John wasn’t sure he had actually seen it. 

“Sit down, John. Please,” he said.

With an exasperated huff, John crossed the room again and sat. He refused to meet Mycroft’s gaze.

After a lengthy silence, Mycroft began. “I first came into prominence in MI6 about ten years ago. There was a litany of new threats at home and abroad, so I proposed that we manufacture a new kind of agent: one who could infiltrate the most closed circles in the world and destroy them from within. They would have to exhibit genius-level intelligence, a meticulous nature, and an ability to react quickly under pressure.  It was also essential that they be able manipulate others easily, almost to the point of psychopathy but not quite. The agents would need the skillset to perfect other languages, including the seamless integration of multiple accents. Above all, they had to have the ability to lie so effectively that they could keep up a cover for years on end-- even among the most highly suspicious, observant and well-trained individuals. It was a formidable combination. They could disappear and become a new person with little effort.” 

Mycroft paused, clearing his throat slightly. “My proposal was approved, and Operation Phoenix was established in short order. Alicia-- Mary-- was one of the first agents in the group I personally hand-picked. They were the most elite agents that the British Government had ever produced, and they were completely off the books. They were always out in the field in high-pressure situations, always on the run, always alone.” 

John realized his jaw had dropped some minutes before. He was unable to believe what he was hearing. Mycroft opened his mouth to speak again, but John raised his hand to stop him. 

Taking a moment to gather himself, John said, “Wait. If that’s true, how could you not have _recognized_ her?”

Mycroft sighed, looking down at his umbrella handle again. “It is apparent that she underwent massive facial reconstruction surgery. Mary looked nothing like Alicia did; the only way we discovered her true identity was through DNA testing.”

John frowned, about to ask why, but Mycroft went on.

“Alicia was deep undercover in Russia for more than two years. She had infiltrated the government at the highest level, and none of them had any idea that she wasn’t one of theirs. Until…” Mycroft stopped again, shifting in his seat. He had obviously reached the crux of the story, the part that made him uncomfortable. The silence stretched on endlessly, and the beeping of the monitor suddenly seemed extremely loud.

He swallowed before continuing. “Until I had to make a very difficult choice.” 

John’s stomach dropped out. This wasn’t going to be good, whatever it was. 

Mycroft didn’t look up. “There was another agent in Russia at the same time. He was very green, untested. I protested his placement, actually. But no one listened.” He cleared his throat and looked as if he had swallowed something sour.  

“He made a brazen and foolish move-- trying to prove his worth as an agent-- and he was caught. The Russians threatened to execute him. And… I couldn’t let that happen. I made a deal with them. A life for a life. I gave them Alicia in exchange for him.” Mycroft paused, finally raising his eyes to meet John’s.  

John could barely see, his rage was overpowering. Mycroft had traded her life. Mary wasn’t important enough to him, and he had given her up. 

“Who?” John said, his voice almost a whisper. “Who was it, Mycroft? Who was so bloody important?”

Mycroft swallowed, his eyes flicking quickly over to Sherlock’s bed, then back to John’s face.

_No._

_No, it couldn’t be._  

John slowly looked back at Sherlock’s sleeping form, but it divulged no answers.  

It felt like something sharp was lodged in his throat. “It was Sherlock. You traded Mary for Sherlock.” 

Silence. For once, Mycroft couldn’t seem to decide what to say. 

John’s eyes snapped back to him. He was looking at John with his steely gaze, but it faltered slightly.

“John, it was like Sophie’s choice. I had no--” 

“Don’t give me that,” John held his head in his hands.  

Mycroft paused again. “What would you have done, John?” he said softly. “If it were between Mary and Sherlock, and you could only save one, what would you have done? Sherlock is my brother. It was foolish to make him a Phoenix, but I…” he trailed off. 

John’s mind flashed back to his dream: Mary and Sherlock, both grievously injured. He hadn’t been able to decide which to run to.  
  
“What happened to her?” John could barely speak.  

Mycroft cleared his throat yet again. “It seems that she was subjected to severe psychological and physical torture, and her face…” he shifted in his chair uncomfortably again, “may have been irreparably damaged. Sherlock didn’t fare much better before we retrieved him.”

“ _Fuck_.” John swore under his breath, raking his fingers through his hair. Images of Mary being tortured, of her face bloodied to a pulp, swam in front of John’s eyes… but then her face melted, changed, and became Sherlock’s. He felt as if he were going to be sick.

“When Sherlock came back, he wasn’t the same. He was released immediately from the agency-- he had become a liability.” Mycroft tightened his tie, which already looked like it was in a chokehold. “You always asked me why he turned to drugs. He would never admit it, but it was after he returned from Russia. He would wake up with horrific nightmares, but he would do nothing to relieve the psychological pressure. Eventually, he turned to the needle.” 

John shook his head. It was all too much. 

“As for Mary, the intelligence we were able to glean indicated that there was a 90% chance they had already executed her. We would have had to risk half a dozen more agents, and it was extremely unlikely that they would have come out with anything more than a body,” said Mycroft, pressing his lips together. “For what it’s worth, I advocated vociferously to retrieve her, but I was… overruled.”

John felt rage starting to boil over, and he stood to pace once again. _A 90% chance she was already dead. Mary was being tortured day after day while these chubby men were sitting behind their mahogany desks, sipping tea and contemplating the likelihood of her demise._  

John clenched his fists. “So Mary was coerced into doing this?” he managed to choke out.

Mycroft pressed his lips together even more, looking at him with pity. “I wish I could tell you that, John, to preserve her memory, but it’s not the case. It appears that after about a year, she was given a choice. Either she could remain in captivity, or she could become one of theirs. Alicia chose the latter.” 

“But that means nothing. They _tortured_ her. It wasn’t truly her decision,” John said, walking towards him a few steps.

Mycroft shook his head. “She was trained specifically not to let that happen, John. My agents went through training so psychologically rigorous that torture, while painful, would never break them.” 

He got up and walked over to the window, watching dawn break through the clouds. “According to my sources, when the Russians informed Alicia that I had traded Sherlock for her, her despair turned to rage. She started to hate the country she had once loved, and despised everything she had once bled for. She wanted to destroy us, to abandon us and watch us burn, as she believed we had done to her. So Alicia accepted their offer, and underwent facial reconstruction so extensive that she was unrecognizable. Like a true Phoenix, she emerged from the ashes, bent on revenge.” 

Without noticing, John clenched his fists until his knuckles whitened.  

Mary had trusted Mycroft, and he had betrayed her. Mary had lied to and betrayed John. And Sherlock had lied to him before that. A cycle of lies, lies, and more lies… 

“Jesus, is everyone I know a bloody _psychopath_?” John muttered under his breath.

Mycroft turned to look at him. “That was the problem with these agents, you see,” he said.  “I believed that I had created the perfect agent who could handle this kind of situation for extended periods of time. But I was young and foolish, and I had hubris on my side. I saw Alicia as a weapon, not as a person. What I didn’t realize was that someone who fit my ‘perfect’ profile could be flipped like a switch and suddenly become something much darker.”

“ _Mary_. Her name is-- was-- Mary. Stop calling her _Alica_ ,” John said through gritted teeth. He was fighting the urge to punch Mycroft, or the wall, or both.

Mycroft raised his hands in deference. “Apologies.”  

He turned back to look out the window again, nervously twiddling his umbrella. “About seven years ago we started hearing chatter that the Ardens Vulpi, which had been a passive group, had a new leader that had appeared out of nowhere. He was militant, highly trained and ruthless, and he converted the Vulpi into a terrorist organization. We could never get any kind of intelligence on the leader himself, only his methods. It was not until yesterday that we discovered it was Alicia-- _Mary_ \-- the whole time.”

“But… why? Why did they do this?” John was grinding his teeth. He felt like he was always too slow to understand. None of it made any sense.

Mycroft nodded contemplatively. “A very few select Russian Leaders had decided that the best way to destroy their biggest rivals for world domination was to turn them against each other. Another Cold War, but guerilla style. They wanted it to appear as though you were my agent, and I had ordered you to murder the American President, causing a war between the United States and the UK. The Vulpi weren’t officially affiliated with the Russians at all, so even if they were caught it would be a perfect cover. Mary was able to fund everything through secret offshore accounts. We were eventually able to trace them back to some contractors in Singapore, who happen to also have an office in Moscow. It unraveled from there.” 

Mycroft turned to John, who had been silent throughout this speech, stopping short when he saw John’s face. John felt as though his head were splitting in two.

He hadn’t let it sink in before, not really. Mary had tried to kill the President, destroy England and the entire Western World. 

She hadn’t simply lied to him like Sherlock had. She had made him fall in love with her purposefully, only to rip his life apart. 

And now he knew why. It was for revenge. Revenge against Mycroft and Sherlock.  

John glanced at Sherlock, who was still completely peaceful and oblivious to the entire conversation. His eyelashes fluttered slightly. 

“John--” Mycroft began, taking a step towards him.

“Stop,” John rasped. “Please, just… stop. I can’t…” He turned his back on Mycroft. 

Ignoring John’s pleas, Mycroft walked over to him and held something out. It was a flash drive marked with four initials: A.G.R.A.

“This is everything there is to know about her. It’s yours,” Mycroft said.  

“Jesus, Mycroft,” John said, staring at it. 

“You don’t have to read it, but please take it. So you have the option,” Mycroft pressed. 

John hesitated, staring at it for a long moment before finally taking it.

Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Sherlock’s eyelids flutter again. He strode over to the bedside and grabbed Sherlock’s wrist, feeling his pulse and touching his face lightly. Sherlock moved, just a bit. John recognized the signs. 

“Get the doctors,” John said, wiping his face on his sleeve. “Sherlock is waking up.”

Turning away from him abruptly, John grabbed his coat and strode past a stunned Mycroft out into the corridor. 

Mycroft followed, striding quickly to catch up with John and cut him off. “John, wait. Please." 

John stopped short in the middle of the hallway, his eyes trained on the floor. “I can’t.”

Mycroft stood silently, waiting. John still refused to look up. 

“I can’t look at him and not think about Mary. Every time I see his face, I’ll only be reminded of the fact that the reason Mary became… why she turned down that path… that it was because of him. It wasn’t his fault. I know that. But I can’t… I- I wanted to make sure he would be alright, but now I…”  John couldn’t seem to form a full sentence, so he stopped, running his hand through his hair.

“John,” Mycroft started. John shook his head and made to move around him, but Mycroft sidestepped to block his way again. 

“Get. Out. Of. My. Way,” John said through clenched teeth.

“John, he’s been using again,” Mycroft said in a hushed tone. “The doctors ran a tox screen.” 

A frisson ran through John’s body and he finally let his eyes rise to meet Mycroft’s.  _Fuck._ He knew it. _Sherlock…_

John shook his head. “No, I can’t help him now, Mycroft. I’m even more of a bloody mess than he is. You’ll have to deal with it alone this time.” 

“John, you know why he relapsed. I can’t help him. There’s only one thing he needs.” In another uncharacteristic moment, Mycroft almost seemed to be pleading with him.  

John looked him square in the eye. “I _can’t,_ ” he said bitterly, before turning and walking in the other direction, not looking back once.

 

* * *

He could feel the pain before anything else. As Sherlock swam in and out of consciousness, it felt like there were hot flames licking his wound.  

Through the haze and the sharp agony, though, he could also hear… John. John’s voice. 

Despite the pain, Sherlock fought to wake. There was something important he had to tell him. 

The voices stopped just as he was starting to break into the realm of consciousness. Then there was a great deal of commotion as many voices he didn’t recognize filled the room. As he blinked his eyes open, he saw doctors and nurses surrounding him and fussing about. 

“John?” Sherlock croaked, glancing around. He had heard John’s voice, he knew he had. He couldn’t be far. The door opened and Sherlock’s eyes flew upward, but instead of John he was greeted with the irritating sight of Mycroft. His steely eyes settled on his little brother, and Sherlock felt a mounting dread. 

_No. John._

“If you are quite finished, I would like to have a word alone with my brother,” Mycroft said, his voice carrying the authority of a man who knew how to command a room if he saw fit. Within seconds, they were alone. 

Mycroft remained by the doorway, twirling his ridiculous umbrella. He was dressed in a three-piece, light grey suit, as cleanly pressed as if he had just put it on. But Sherlock knew for a fact that he hadn’t slept in days.

“John?” Sherlock asked finally, unable to bear it any longer.

Mycroft didn’t answer, walking towards the window with nonchalance. “I told you that caring wasn’t an advantage, little brother,” he said in a guarded tone. “You let your judgement slide. One of the greatest threats to our country in recent memory was right under your nose for months, and you never noticed.”

“Mycroft, where’s John? Tell me. _Now_.” Sherlock fought the rising panic in his throat. Had John been injured after he had passed out? Was he in the hospital? 

“John is fine physically, but he has had a shock. The woman he loved turned out to be a terrorist and an assassin, and now she is gone. He needs some… I believe the term is ‘space.’” 

Sherlock refused to look at him, choosing instead to stare at the blank wall across from his bed.

“So, back on the sauce, I see,” Mycroft said flippantly, still looking out the window.

“It was for the _case_ ,” he said between gritted teeth. “I can stop whenever I want to.” 

“Dare to dream, brother mine. You’re allowed morphine at the moment because you were shot, but if you seek the needle once you leave this hospital, I will not hesitate to have you remanded to an institution again,” Mycroft said airily, his tone completely at odds with the threat leaving his lips.  

“As if I couldn’t manage to escape again, _brother mine_ ,” Sherlock muttered under his breath, closing his eyes.

Mycroft let out an exasperated huff. Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes, but Sherlock could tell that Mycroft had more to say. 

“Sherlock,” he began, finally. “There’s something else.” 

Sherlock didn’t move. He wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and Mycroft’s very presence was chafing. 

Mycroft walked slowly back over to Sherlock’s bedside. He twiddled his umbrella infuriatingly for another moment before he spoke. “Sherlock, Mary was Alicia. The agent I traded you for in Operation Quetzalcoatl.”

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open. “ _No_ ,” he said under his breath. 

For the first time since he had taken the case only two days ago, the chaos had settled into a beautifully complicated pattern. Mary’s vendetta against Sherlock, her hatred for him and for England. It made devastatingly perfect sense.

Sherlock sucked in his breath. “You told him.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock could see Mycroft’s shoulders sag slightly in admission. 

Of course.  

John couldn’t stand to be around Sherlock because he was a constant reminder of the fact that Mary had been sold to the Russians in exchange for him.

John would hate him, now. For his association with Mary’s downfall and eventual death. 

But what was even worse… was the fact that Mary must have seduced John to get to Sherlock. It wasn’t just that John had been a good fit for her plans. It was personal, an attack aimed specifically at him. It was revenge, for the life Sherlock had stolen from her.

Mycroft sighed, pausing to rock backward on his heels before he decided to continue. “Do you remember what I said to you, once you were out of Russia?”

Sherlock didn’t respond, but that didn’t seem to faze Mycroft. “I asked you why--”  

“I _remember_ , Mycroft. Leave me in peace. I was shot, I’m in shock. I’m fragile. _Get out._ ”

Rolling his eyes, Mycroft turned and started to leave the room. He paused at the door, tapping his umbrella on the floor lightly. He didn’t turn to look at Sherlock, but he cleared his throat.   

“Just so you are aware, he refused to leave your side the entire time you were unconscious. He didn’t leave until he was certain that you would pull through. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an international incident to avoid.” Mycroft hesitated another moment, before leaving the room. 

Sherlock stared at the closed door as if it would reveal more if he scrutinized it long enough. There was no sound, now, except the beeping of his monitor in the background, but it was drowned out by the roaring in his ears. 

Sherlock closed his eyes, suddenly gasping for breath. Something was happening to him. It was like the ache that had lodged in his chest after John had told him to stay away… but this was worse. 

John hadn’t even been able to stay to see Sherlock wake. His doctorly nature hadn’t allowed him to leave before his patient stabilized, but that was all. He hadn't even stayed to say goodbye.  

Before, there had been a chance that John would forgive him… but now, he associated Sherlock with pain, with the loss of Mary.

A single tear leaked out of the corner of Sherlock’s eye, leaving a long streak down his face.

“ _My heart is breaking_ ,” wasn’t that the phrase? That was a misnomer. It didn’t feel as though something inside him had broken. 

No. It was like a chasm, a hole in his chest cavity. A yawning abyss of loss. Where Sherlock’s heart had been, there was only emptiness.

Sherlock tried to retreat to his mind palace. To make it stop. He was spinning, spinning, his mind reeling. 

 _I could delete it, all of it. I could delete John._  

The second the thought crossed his mind, Sherlock flinched away from it as if he had touched a hot burner.  

No. He couldn’t. It was impossible. He wouldn’t be able to even if he tried.

Sherlock turned his head to the side, and his morphine bag caught his gaze.

Another tear fell, and Sherlock brushed it away angrily. Gingerly, wincing with every movement, he reached over and turned up the morphine drip fivefold. He lay back, closing his eyes as the soft waves of nothingness started to roll over him. He sighed with relief. The aching chasm in his chest seemed to fill-- even if it was only a mirage.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I am so sorry. It gets better. I promise.
> 
>  
> 
> 2\. V: [as "The Count of Monte Cristo" ends] Did you like it?
> 
> Evey: Yeah. But it made me feel sorry for Mercedes.
> 
> V: Why?
> 
> Evey: Because he cared more about revenge than he did about her.  
>  
> 
> And there you have it, the original reason this was inspired by V for Vendetta, other than the attack on Parliament. Mary was the masked vigilante, bent on revenge against the government, Mycroft and Sherlock-- but in her case, her mask was her reconstructed face. 
> 
> A couple people have asked whether Mary ever loved John in this fic. Let’s just say that, like Dantes with Mercedes, Mary was consumed with a desire for revenge and her sense of betrayal was so great that there was very little room left in her heart.
> 
>  
> 
> 3\. Remember how Mycroft convinced Sherlock to help him with the terrorist case all the way back in chapter 1 because he mentioned “Quetzalcoatl?” Well, now you finally know why. It was the name of the Operation in which Mycroft got Sherlock out of Russia in exchange for Mary. Ironic, no?


	8. Reignited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It felt like it had taken them a lifetime to get here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbetaed because my wonderful and lovely beta Kate is super busy doing real things like writing her thesis. Which is more important than editing a fanfic.

 

_One Year Later_

 

 

John drained the last of his second beer and signaled to the bartender, moving his empty glass forward. Another foaming pint appeared in front of him almost immediately. He must look like a man in dire need of a drink. Or several. 

“Thanks,” John said without looking up. 

“Anytime, love,” a smooth voice said. “Bad day, was it?” 

John glanced upward. The bartender was a rather pretty and somewhat curvaceous brunette. She was leaning on the counter, which would have made it all too easy for John to look down her white button-down. That is, if he had wanted to.

He forced a grin, which probably came out as more of a grimace. “Bit,” he said, taking a big gulp of the cool beer and glancing behind him, wondering where Lestrade was. They were supposed to meet half an hour ago, and he was never normally this late. 

“Want to talk about it?” She skimmed her fingernails over her full lips, watching him. 

“I don’t think you want to know,” John said honestly. 

She laughed, a deep, rich sound, and John smiled in spite of himself. If he had met her a few years ago, he would have asked for her number already, but now… he couldn’t be more uninterested. 

“Try me, love. I’ve heard it all.”

John cleared his throat, realizing that he would have to be brutal or she wouldn’t leave him be. “My fiance… died… a year ago. Today.”

He moved his beer glass to the side and ran his finger over the ring of condensation that was left behind. The bartender straightened up quickly. 

“Jesus. I’m sorry for pressing--”

“It’s nothing,” John interrupted. He glanced upward and gave her a warm smile. “But thank you." 

She straightened her apron and tucked her hair behind her ear, averting her eyes. “All the same. The drinks are on me tonight, love.”

“You don’t have to--” 

“It’s my pleasure,” she said, smiling at him with a touch of pity in her eyes. He was already regretting having told her.

As she moved away, John scanned around again for Lestrade. There was a raucous and muddy rugby team in one corner, but otherwise there were few patrons in the pub. Lestrade definitely wasn’t there. 

Sighing, John was about to turn back towards the bar-- when a tall figure in the doorway caught his eye.

It was Sherlock. He looked as though he hadn’t quite decided whether to enter or not, and he was perched on the threshold for an easy getaway. His eyes met John’s and widened. 

The air in John’s lungs went out in a rush. Though it had been a full year since he had seen that pale and angular face, or the sweeping lines of that coat, it was almost as if no time had passed. For a long moment, neither of them moved or spoke.  

John finally broke the gaze, setting down his beer with a loud _‘thunk’_ and standing up. 

He could feel (rather than hear) Sherlock walking slowly over to him. Without looking up, John took out his wallet and threw a few notes onto the counter. Sherlock paused next to him, still silent.

“So, what, did Greg tell you I was going to be here? Is that it? Or did you _deduce_ it somehow?” John muttered, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugging it on. 

“John,” Sherlock began in those velvety tones that John had once known so well. He stopped, gripping the back of the chair. 

“Don’t,” John said, trying to stay in control. “Not today. Not _today_ , Sherlock.” 

Sherlock hesitated. “I know what day it is, John,” he said quietly.

John closed his eyes and shook his head. After a full year, he would have thought that the pain would be dulled... but it was like the wound had been ripped open anew. Seeing Sherlock’s face had brought back a flood of memories: of Mary’s eyes at the split second when she was shot, and of her body lying on the ground, lifeless. 

But it was more than that. Seeing Sherlock again made it even more clear how much John had missed him. The man really was like a bloody drug. Just the sight of him made John feel a strange longing deep inside, like a junkie craving a fix.

“John, please. Just wait.” Sherlock hesitated, before covering John’s hand with his own. John’s nostrils flared and almost ripped it away, but something stopped him. His anger went red-hot momentarily, then, astoundingly, it faded-- like a supernova that had burst and died. In its place was only exhaustion. He hung his head, shaking it slowly from side to side. 

“I know I have no right to ask you for anything, John. I am asking you for a--a kindness. Please, just for me?” Unable to help it, John glanced up, and Sherlock’s features were softer than he had ever seen them. He wasn’t hiding behind a farcical or guarded facade.  

“That’s not fair,” John said at a whisper. “Using those words… it’s not fair and you know it.” 

“You know me, John. I don’t believe in fighting fair.” Sherlock attempted a smile, but it faltered quickly when he saw the look on John’s face. 

John choked back a laugh. How many times? How many times was he going to do this?How many times was he going to let Sherlock flounce back into his life, sweeping through the emotional wreckage and not caring how it affected him? The only difference between now and when Sherlock had come back from the dead was... Mary. She had been his constant, his anchor. He had been able to handle the inconsistency of Sherlock because she had been there. 

“Please, John. Just listen to what I have to say. If you decide when I'm finished that you still never want to see me again, I will accept that. I... will let you go.” If John didn’t know better, he would have thought that Sherlock’s voice had cracked on the last word. 

John pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. The fatigue had started to settle into his bones. 

It wasn’t an unreasonable request, and he probably couldn’t be in any more pain than he was right now.  

He sighed. “Fine, Sherlock,” John said, lowering his hand to see the quickest flash of hope in Sherlock’s eyes. “Where are we going?”

 

* * *

After an uncomfortably silent ride, they finally arrived. Sherlock jumped out of the taxi to open the door for John.

“I should have known,” John said under his breath as he emerged, but he didn’t seem irritated. 

“Is this alright?” Sherlock asked apprehensively as he paid the cabbie.

“No. I mean, yes. It’s… fitting,” John said, following him up to the door of 221 Baker Street. Sherlock unlocked the door quickly and led him upstairs. Thankfully, Mrs. Hudson appeared to be out, otherwise she would have surely attempted to waylay them with tea and biscuits.

Sherlock took John’s coat and hung it on the rack as John wandered into the living room. “God, it’s exactly the same,” said John, looking around. He stopped short as his eyes fell on the space where his chair used to be.

“Where’s my chair?” John said, sounding a bit piqued. 

“It was… blocking my view to the kitchen,” replied Sherlock, straightening his jacket and walking briskly into the kitchen. “Tea?” he called out as he started filling the kettle.  

“Where did you put it?”  

“Pardon?” 

John walked in with a slightly befuddled look on his face. “My chair. Where did you put it?” 

Sherlock put the kettle on the stove.“Upstairs, in your old room.”  

“Why?” 

Sherlock shrugged. _Because I couldn’t stand staring at it anymore, knowing that I may never see you sitting in it again._  

John let out a small huff of air, looking back at the spot. Though he attempted to seem nonchalant, Sherlock had never truly acclimated to the absence of the ridiculous piece of furniture. It still felt like there was a gaping emptiness in the flat. 

“Earl grey?” Sherlock said, breaking the awkward silence. 

John sat at the kitchen table (which, thankfully, Sherlock had cleared of any experiments earlier that afternoon just in case), crossing his arms. “Fine, anything’s fine.”

Sherlock stopped and looked at John out of the corner of his eye. “Something stronger?” John had obviously already had about two and a half pints of beer, but he still seemed anxious.  

John’s mouth quirked up into a grin. “I wouldn’t say no to that.”

Sherlock nodded, striding to the living room where he kept a bottle of aged scotch that Mycroft had given him long ago. It was undoubtedly extremely expensive, so, out of spite, Sherlock had refused to drink it.

Sherlock set it on the kitchen table, grabbing two clean glasses. When he turned back, John was cradling the bottle with both hands and scrutinizing the label with an awed look on his face. 

“Do you know what this is?” John said. 

Sherlock sat, placing the two tumblers on the table. “Scotch?”  

John snorted, shaking his head incredulously. He glanced up, and for a tiny moment there was a tiny flash of that look-- the look John used to give him when Sherlock had done something exasperating, yet endearing.“You really are clueless, aren’t you? It’s Macellan 1939. It’s got to be at least ten thousand pounds per bottle. Where did you even _get_ this?”

Sherlock sniffed indignantly. “It’s from Mycroft. He said it was a gift from some foreign dignitary or another, and he was on one of his ridiculous diets at the time and could not imbibe. Liquor has never interested me, so I would never bother to store such useless information. When I indulged in substances of that sort, it was mostly intravenous, as you well know.” 

John frowned. “Was?”

Sherlock cocked his head to the side.

“You… have you been…” John waved his hand. 

 _Oh._ “No, John. I have been clean for a full year now. Since the-- since I was in hospital.”

John’s eyes flicked over Sherlock’s face. _He’s wondering how I stopped. And why._

Sherlock returned the gaze, but didn’t speak. _It was for you, John. I refused to add yet another reason for you to be unable to forgive me. I don’t want the drugs as much as I want you. I’ve never wanted anything that much._

He had wanted to use, desperately. More than once. In the long hours of the night, when he couldn’t stand the raging emptiness in his chest, he had craved it endlessly. But somehow he had managed not to reach for the needle again.

Clearing his throat, John nodded. He returned to scrutinizing the label. “Good. That’s… good.” 

Sherlock licked his lips, not entirely sure what to say. It was agonizing. He worried that a single misstep would cause John to leave again, this time for good.  

“Are you sure you want to drink this?” John said, handing the bottle back to Sherlock. 

“No better time than the present,” he replied, opening the bottle. “Ice?" 

John snorted again. “Blasphemy. I’m Scottish, remember?”

“But of course, John _Hamish_ Watson. How could I have forgotten?” 

John rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. 

Sherlock tried not to grin as he poured them each three fingers. It was like shrugging on an old and comfortable jacket, being with John again. Even though John was still guarded, he was here. He was willing to listen.

John picked up his glass, sniffing it before taking a sip. He sighed, closing his eyes and sitting back in his chair a bit. “Oh… wow. That is _good_.”

Sherlock took a sip himself, hardly even noticing the taste of the alcohol. His mind was too busy taking snapshots of every part of John: the way his light-colored eyelashes fanned out on his skin, the ridiculously lumpy and colourless jumper-- it was the same one he had worn during their first case-- and the way his blunt fingers traced the rim of the glass. Sherlock’s memories hadn’t faded, but they were nothing in comparison with the man himself, here in his flat. The emptiness in his chest cavity didn’t feel quite so vast, even if it was only temporary.

They sat in an almost-companionable silence for a few minutes, sipping their scotch, until John leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table. He swirled his glass, scrutinizing it, very deliberately not looking up.

“Alright then,” he said. “Out with it. What did you want to tell me?” 

Sherlock gulped. He set down his glass, clasping his hands together on the table.Over the past year, he had thought about this moment countless times without knowing if it would ever occur. He hadn’t dared to hope that John would agree to listen to him. All the same, he had considered endless permutations of what he would say, given the opportunity. Now that he finally had the chance, he was having trouble finding the words. 

Even having John in his life again would be enough, if he could manage it. Even though he craved more, though he wanted _everything_ \-- if John would accept his friendship again, it was all he could ask for.

He could feel John’s eyes on him, waiting. Sherlock took a deep breath. “I am aware that you are still in pain, John, and that you may be for the near future. There were many times in the past year when I wished to explain everything, but I wanted to give you some… time.”

He paused, glancing up at John. He was now watching Sherlock with an expression of calm (aided by the scotch, no doubt), with just a hint of sharp pain in his eyes. 

Sherlock swallowed. “I know what Mycroft told you about Alicia-- Mary-- and my part in her capture. But even Mycroft was not aware of some details about what happened. I just want to make sure you know everything, and then I will leave you in peace, should you so wish it.”

John broke the gaze, taking another big sip of scotch. Sherlock poured him another. 

John chuckled bitterly. “Trying to get me drunk on your thousand-pound-a-glass scotch? That won’t make this easier, Sherlock.” 

“No. It won’t. But it might make you able to stand listening a while longer.”  

“Fair enough,” John said, taking another sip. “Go on, then.” 

Sherlock closed his eyes briefly, turning through the pages of the prepared speech in his mind. 

He took another sip of scotch before he began. “It all started more than ten years ago. When I graduated from Uni, I had no clear direction. Everything bored me. I considered becoming an academic, but academics-- and students for that matter-- are insufferable.” 

John snorted. “Yeah, I can just see you being a professor, telling all your students daily that they are complete idiots.”

Sherlock smiled sarcastically, causing John to chortle into his glass.

“I was listless. I sought diversion by any means, and every distraction was fleeting. I worked as an underground computer hacker for some time, then as a chemist in a respectable pharmaceutical company. Unable to bear any of it, I disappeared. I lived on the street for some time before Mycroft found me and forced me to return home. I had nothing, no one. I was… ungrounded. Untethered.” Sherlock’s eyes flicked up to meet John’s again.  

“One Christmas, I heard Mycroft speaking on the phone in hushed tones about something called the ‘Phoenix.’ Intrigued, I hacked into the MI6 database and read everything I could about them. It seemed like something that, at the very least, wouldn’t bore me.  

“I applied for the program, and I went through vigorous testing until I was accepted in the third round of agents. Mycroft was no longer involved in the selection process by then-- having more ‘important’ matters on his plate-- and when he found out, he was furious, of course. He tried to veto my acceptance. By then, however, several of his higher-ups had taken notice of me, and they were… shall we say… persuasive. They considered me to be the prototype of the ‘ideal’ Phoenix agent.” 

John smirked, shaking his head. “I bet he wasn’t pleased about that.” 

“Indeed. I was very young, though not the youngest agent by any means. Despite Mycroft’s protests, I was given my first assignment and paired with Alicia. They had ascertained that our personalities and skills complimented each other perfectly. She was two classes ahead of me, and she had already been placed in Russia.”

Sherlock paused, watching the smile slide off of John’s face. John took another gulp of scotch, running his hand over his hair. 

“When I arrived, I could tell instantly that she was in over her head. She had turned the officials against one another, playing them and manipulating them. We were trained to be able to handle that kind of situation for long periods of time, but these men were shrewd. They were starting to suspect, and I could see that she was playing with fire. She disregarded my warnings, citing her experience and my lack thereof. She was blinded by the belief that she was untouchable, which was a characteristic of far too many Phoenix Operatives.” 

Sherlock paused, taking another large sip from his glass. A pleasantly warm feeling was settling in his chest. Perhaps he had been wrong to disregard the scotch until now. 

He cleared his throat and continued. “One day, she discovered that there were some missile plans on a hard drive in the consul and she set a plan in motion to steal it.I tried to make contact with our higher-ups to get approval, because it would surely blow our cover, but she refused to wait. Foolishly, I went with her.”

Sherlock glanced at John. He was listening with rapt attention, his face a mask of tenuous calm; but there was a tightness around his eyes. 

Sherlock ripped his gaze away, looking into his glass to find the strength to continue. “We were in the consul, and I heard Russian agents heading our way. Realizing that we had been compromised, I told her to run while I caused a diversion. Essentially, I allowed myself to be captured so that she would be able to retain her cover.” He ran his hand over his face. This was the part that he had locked into a dark room at the bottom of his mind palace, trying to forget it had ever happened. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and released the memories. 

“I was in captivity for more than a month. During that time, I was… tortured, extensively. They wanted the name of the other agent, but I refused to give Alicia up. Due to my training, neither psychological nor physical torture could break me, and instead I retreated into my mind. I collapsed so far into my mind palace that it was hard to extricate myself.” 

Sherlock let his eyes rise to watch John again. He was staring at the table, gripping the counter with his hand so tightly that his knuckles had whitened.He was obviously imagining Sherlock-- and Mary-- being tortured. 

Cringing inwardly, Sherlock resisted the urge to walk over and comfort John. After a moment, he continued.“Then Mycroft traded me for her, and it had all been for naught. I fought vociferously with Mycroft to let me go back in her place. He refused, as you know. I felt that I had failed her. I...” he took a drink, finishing his glass. 

“I looked up to her, John. I was young, and she was my mentor. I wanted to protect her at all costs. But in the end, none of it mattered. After a while, I realized that Alicia was lost. That was when I first sought the needle.”

A long moment passed and neither of them moved. 

John put his glass down and rested his elbows on the table, cradling his head in both hands and closing his eyes. His face was written with sorrow, agony, and an exhaustion that went bone-deep.

Sherlock reached out a hand involuntarily. “I-- I’m sorry, John. If this is to be our last meeting, so be it. But I needed you to know the whole truth."  

There was a long silence, punctured only by the wailing of a siren far in the distance.  

 

 

* * *

John held his head in his hands, staring down at the kitchen table. 

Mary was never real. She was a fiction. He had known that. He had come to terms with it over the past year. 

He had never looked at the flashdrive. It had seemed pointless, somehow; it wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t have told him everything anyway. 

To him, Alicia was more of a fiction to John than Mary had been. She was Mary with all of the layers peeled back, far before John had ever known her. She had been young, like Sherlock, and she had made a mistake. 

What he hadn’t known was that Sherlock had tried to save Mary. He had loved her, in a way-- as a mentor, a sister-in-arms. Sherlock didn’t give out loyalties easily, but once he did, he would die before letting his friends fall. He had tried to give his life for hers when she had made a foolish error. And then Mycroft had made the decision for them, her life for his. It wasn’t Sherlock’s fault. 

 _It wasn’t his fault._  

All Sherlock had done, all he had ever done, was try to protect those he cared about. Over and over again, John had blamed him for it and thrown it back in his face. 

A single tear ran down John’s nose and dripped onto the tabletop. Sherlock hadn’t moved or made a sound in several minutes. He was waiting for John to decide. 

“God, Sherlock,” he said, watching another tear fall. It splattered onto the counter, spreading out in a star pattern. His shoulders were trembling, and everything was starting to go into a kind of haze. He had definitely had too much to drink.  

Silently, Sherlock stood and walked around the table to stand next to John. Hesitating for a moment, Sherlock reached out and pressed a hand to John’s shoulder.  

He was trying to comfort John. Sherlock Holmes. The man who claimed he didn’t understand human nature, and who despised sentiment and physical affection. 

It tipped John over the edge. The trembling turned into shuddering. He wasn’t sobbing, but he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He was… _oh god,_ _I’m hyperventilating_.  

“John,” Sherlock sounded concerned now. He knelt next to John, trying to see his face. John glanced at him, taking shuddering breaths.

Sherlock’s countenance was written with concern and apprehension, but also… something else. His hand slid from John’s shoulder to his chest. 

“Try to breathe, John,” he said slowly.  

John looked once more into his stunning verdigris eyes, and he felt that sudden longing again, deep inside him. It was visceral, and it felt strange-- but at the same time it was like falling back into an old habit.  

Sherlock was here, in front of him, and he _cared._ Suddenly all the times John had turned his back on him or blamed him for things that were beyond his control flashed before his eyes.

Without consciously making a decision, he pulled Sherlock into a hug.

Sherlock made a small noise of surprise but didn’t pull away. John grabbed a fistful of Sherlock’s hair and a fistful of the back of his shirt, and didn’t let go.

Slowly, Sherlock slid his hands around to John’s back, holding him firmly but not tightly, allowing him room to breathe. John’s nose was buried in Sherlock’s neck. He could feel Sherlock’s heart beating, his chest rising with every breath. Eventually, his own breathing started to slow.  

John didn’t pull away. Through the haze of too little oxygen and too much alcohol, however, he started to realize what he had just done. 

Was this crossing a line? Sherlock would surely pull away at any second. Wouldn’t he?  

“John.” Sherlock’s voice rumbled through his chest, and by association vibrated through John’s. But he still didn’t pull away. Neither of them did.

Sherlock Holmes was holding him.

And he wasn’t pulling away. 

John exhaled. “I’m so sorry, Sherlock,” he slurred. 

Sherlock leaned back slightly so that he could look at John’s face, but he kept supporting him with his arms.

“For god’s sake, why are _you_ sorry?” 

John pressed his lips together. His eyelids were suddenly extremely heavy. He must be having an adrenalin crash. 

_I’m sorry that I blamed you for Mary’s death. I’m sorry for leaving you and never explaining why, when you were lying wounded and broken in a hospital bed. I’m sorry for being unable to separate my pain about Mary from you. I’m sorry that I pushed you away, when all you have ever done was try to save me. I’m sorry for being a blind and selfish bastard._

“For everything,” was all he managed to say. Another tear escaped his eye and rolled down his cheek.

Sherlock’s eyes faltered slightly, but he smoothed the hair on the back of John’s head with one hand.

“I am too,” he said simply. 

As John watched his lips move, he had a sudden, irrational desire to taste them. Which was ridiculous, because Sherlock would never want to _kiss_ anyone, let alone him. 

He really was too drunk. He was thinking about kissing his ex-roommate, a possibly-asexual man who he hadn’t spoken to in a year. 

Sherlock’s eyes widened, just a tiny bit. John almost thought that they looked dilated. But that was impossible.

“Sherlock… why did you move my chair?” John murmured.

Sherlock tensed slightly but didn’t look away. “I couldn’t stand to see it empty anymore,” he said earnestly.His eyes flickered, and for one moment John thought he saw… heartbreak. 

John pressed his lips together, trying to make sense of this. The implication… it was too much. He couldn’t… it was all too much. Everything had shifted so much already. 

John shook his head, trying to clear it, feeling the waves of exhaustion crash down on him. “Sherlock, can I… is it alright if I…” 

“Sleep here?” Sherlock looked like he was trying not to be too hopeful. John cracked a half-grin, nodding. 

Sherlock swallowed. “I-- of course. Take my bed.”

John shook his head, and it felt like the scotch was sloshing around in his skull. “No. I’ll go on the couch."

“Don’t be ridiculous, John, I’m not going to sleep anytime soon, and if I do, the couch is more than adequate. Take my bed.” 

“M’kay,” John said, too emotionally drained to argue, as Sherlock helped him up and led him back to his room.

John sat down on the bed, pulling his shoes off. The rest seemed like too much effort, so he just lay back against the pillows with the rest of his clothes on.

“Goodnight, John,” Sherlock said, hesitating momentarily, before turning out the light and closing the door. Within moments, John was sound asleep. 

 

* * *

John blinked against the desert sun. It was so bright that it was like razor blades slicing across his eyes. He turned on the spot. Nothing was visible in any direction.

Picking a trajectory at random, he started walking. 

The barren wasteland stretched out before him, endlessly. Time passed, but he wasn’t sure how much. 

He came to a crest of a hill, and he flattened to his belly, inching upward so that he couldn’t be seen as a target. 

As John peered over, he saw two figures below him in a valley. His jaw dropped.

It was Mary and Sherlock. Mary was dressed in all black and she had a gun pointed to Sherlock’s forehead. Sherlock was staring up at him with sorrow, but resign.

“Mary!” John shouted, scrambling to his feet and starting to run toward them. “Mary, stop!” 

Sherlock held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t move, John. It’s for the best,” he said calmly. 

Mary smiled a terrifying smile, and pulled the trigger. Sherlock fell immediately, his head destroyed. From far away, John heard someone screaming in terror.

  

* * *

“John. John, wake up,” a voice said softly. Someone was touching his shoulder.

John gasped, his eyes flying open. 

A tense look of concern on his face, Sherlock was kneeling at the bedside. John realized belatedly that his hand was clenched on Sherlock’s arm.

“Sh-Sherlock?” John, said, releasing the death grip and blinking confusedly. He sat up, slowly, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

“Are you… alright?” Sherlock ventured carefully. “You were having a nightmare. I thought it was best to wake you.” 

John sucked in deep breaths. “I’m… I’ll be fine. I’ve had ones like it before.” He was still fuzzy-- the remnants of the scotch had not completely left his system-- but he was slightly more lucid now. Damp sweat covered his body and he was trembling slightly. 

“Was it the war?” 

John blinked, looking over at Sherlock. There were a few slanting rays of light coming in from the window, and they lit his face in strange angles, making him appear even more ethereal than usual.He had apparently changed into his dressing robe and pyjama pants, but no shirt, which was… distracting. 

“Yes. But not in the way you think,” John said, sighing and scooting backward to lean against the headboard. 

Pausing momentarily, Sherlock nodded before he unfolded himself and stood up on his feet. “I’m glad you are all right,” he said, starting to move toward the door. 

“Sherlock,” John said, not knowing he was going to speak until the word had left his mouth. He swung his feet down to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed. 

Sherlock stopped, turning back.  

John opened his mouth, then closed it. A second stretched into an infinity. What was he doing? Why did he suddenly hate the idea of Sherlock leaving?

He exhaled. _Oh. Oh god._ He wanted Sherlock to stay with him. In his bed.

That wasn’t something that a platonic friend asked another friend. It wasn’t even something that close friends did.

The few words that he could utter to bring them together seemed insurmountable. There was a yawning chasm in front of them. It had always been there, before Sherlock had left-- but John had never thought to do anything about it. Sherlock didn’t seem to need him the way he needed Sherlock. His entire universe had been oriented around this man, and then it had been shattered like Sherlock’s broken body on the pavement. 

And then… when Sherlock had returned, there had been Mary. 

He would never have considered even broaching the subject until he saw Sherlock’s face when he asked about the chair. 

Was he just used to having John in his life? Was that it? He seemed extremely focused on getting John to forgive him. But why? Was it just because he missed his friendship?

Would he even know what John was asking?

John gulped. Only one way to find out. “ _Pleasewillyoustay_?” he said in a rush, before he could change his mind. 

He held back what he meant to say-- what he wanted to say. _Do want me? I want you. I want you so badly it hurts. Fuck, I really do. How did I not see it before? I was so blind. But I don't know what you want. It all scares the hell out of me._  

Sherlock exhaled, closing his eyes. John panicked. _Shit. I’m a total and complete idiot. Of course he wouldn’t want that. Of course not. Why would he?_  

John backpedaled. “I-- never mind. I’m--” 

“Yes,” Sherlock interrupted, his eyes flying open. “Yes.”

“Yes?” John parroted, wondering what they were talking about now. 

Sherlock walked the few steps over to John, taking his head in both hands. “Yes,” he said, his voice dropping to a very low tenor, almost like a purr. It sent a small thrill down John’s body.  

“Jesus,” John said, covering Sherlock’s hands with his own. “Are we… talking about what I think we are talking about?” John was trembling again. He had no idea what was going through Sherlock’s mind, and it terrified him. Only a few hours ago, he had never planned on seeing him again, and now…  

“ _Yes_ ,” Sherlock said again.

"Are you sure?" John whispered, their eyes locked. _Because I can't go back from this. If you move any closer, it's over. I won't be able to go back._

Sherlock smiled, a flicker of pure joy in his eyes. "I've never been more certain in my life." He leaned down, slowly, and John’s stomach dropped out as his face lifted to meet Sherlock’s. 

Their lips finally met, after what felt like an achingly long time. Their noses bumped together slightly and John felt Sherlock’s warm breath on his face. 

Sherlock seemed to be attempting a chaste and short kiss, but John wanted more instantly. He pressed his tongue against Sherlock’s lips, and Sherlock opened them, breathing heavily. John pulled him forward until Sherlock was on top of him, and John wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s back. He slid one hand up to fist into his hair, and he could feel Sherlock’s heart pounding as he sucked on his bottom lip. Sherlock made a little whimpering noise that caused a frisson all the way down John’s spine. 

Despite his myriad protests over the years, he somehow didn't care that Sherlock was a man. He wanted him. He knew now that he had always wanted him, deep down. He wanted him so badly that his whole being felt on fire with it. 

It felt like it had taken them a lifetime to get here. After all the heartbreak and the lost time, the long separations and the emptiness of loss... Sherlock Holmes was kissing John Watson, and John was kissing him back. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Macellan 1939 is actually $10,000 dollars, not pounds, per bottle, but close enough :)
> 
> 2\. Yay! Johnlock has finally arrived! Sorry it took 30K words... full warning, the rating will definitely change next chapter.


	9. Feu Eternel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically a fluffy thank you to everyone who put up with my crazy plots and angst for almost 40K words. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Also thank you to Kate and Erin for being amazing betas, and for being wonderful people.
> 
> Note that the rating has changed to M.

Sherlock was in the living room, considering whether he should dissect the pig’s liver in his fridge before he went to sleep, when he heard John yelling in the bedroom.

He strode quickly over to his room, kneeling at the bedside as John tossed and turned, obviously in distress. Sherlock woke John as gently as possible by touching his shoulder, trying to ground him to the present and bring him out of the terror of his dreams.  Though he seemed confused at first upon waking, John assured him that it was just a nightmare. 

Sherlock nodded, relieved that John seemed alright, but feeling strangely empty as he stood and started to leave the room.

“Sherlock.” John swung around to the edge of the bed and planted his feet on the floor. Sherlock turned back, but John didn’t say anything for a long moment. It was as if he too much to say and couldn’t put it to words. 

He licked his lips and said, “Please will you stay?” in a rush. He looked unbelievably vulnerable, and in his eyes was a hunger that Sherlock had never seen-- well, at least, not directed at him. 

Sherlock exhaled and closed his eyes. John wanted him to stay. He wasn’t just asking for comfort from a friend; Sherlock could see it in his eyes. He was asking if Sherlock wanted him. 

It was overwhelming. He had never even dared to hope that John would forgive him, let alone that he would want anything more.  

“I-- never mind, I’m--” Sherlock could hear the panic in John’s voice, and his eyes snapped open. 

“Yes,” he interrupted. “Yes.” _Of course I do. Even when I didn’t want to see it. Before the fall, before Mary’s death, all of it. But I never dreamed that you would want me back._

John’s jaw dropped. “Yes?” he asked cautiously, as if he wasn’t quite able to grasp what Sherlock was saying.

Sherlock crossed the few steps to the bed, taking John’s head in both his hands. “Yes,” he managed to say, his voice dropping low. He could feel John’s body trembling.

“Jesus. Are we… talking about what I think we are talking about?” John asked softly, covering Sherlock’s hands with his own. Sherlock watched his lips move, and felt John’s slightly rough fingertips graze over his knuckles.  

“ _Yes,_ ” he repeated again, fully aware that he had said it more times than was truly necessary.

“Are you sure?” John said, almost at a whisper. His eyes were apprehensive and cautious-- yet hopeful-- mirroring Sherlock’s own inner turmoil.  

“I’ve never been more certain in my life.” 

As he leaned inward, Sherlock could hear John’s sharp inhale of breath. For a split second Sherlock almost hesitated, but there had been too many years of separation and too many moments wasted in longing for him to hesitate any longer. 

Sherlock just lightly brushed his lips against John’s, nearly collapsing with relief because John didn’t pull back. 

No, John decidedly did _not_ pull back; instead, he gasped slightly, edging on the kiss until it became more heated. He licked over Sherlock’s lips until they parted involuntarily, allowing John’s tongue to slip in. Breathing heavily into Sherlock’s mouth, John grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him forward as he lay back on the bed.

Rational thought was immediately suspended. The idea that he should stop, that they should become acclimatized to this massive shift in their relationship before it went any further, retreated into the farthest corner of his mind.  

John was here, on his bed. Not only that, but he was currently wrapping himself around Sherlock and tugging on his hair as he snogged him senseless.

Sherlock’s brain was definitely offline. 

In one quick motion, John grabbed him by the shoulders and rolled him down, switching their positions. He smiled, pressing Sherlock into the mattress. 

“That’s… better…” John said between kisses, pushing Sherlock’s robe off his shoulders one at a time and leaning down to kiss along his throat. 

As he pushed the robe off the shoulder with the bullet scar, John froze. Sherlock watched his facial expressions, which flicked between surprise, hurt, anger, and...

John dipped down to kiss the scar. Sighing, Sherlock closed his eyes and lay back, running his hands up John’s back under his jumper. John’s caresses against his ravaged skin felt like an apology. It was as if he were trying to eradicate the pain that Mary had caused them both. 

Kissing along Sherlock’s collarbone, John ran one hand down his bare stomach and started pulling at the strings of his pyjamas. 

Barely able to breathe, Sherlock managed to gasp, “You are still wearing far too many clothes.” 

John chuckled. “Eager, are we?” His eyes twinkled slightly with what looked like joy.

“Well, you have me at a bit of a disadvantage,” Sherlock attempted to say in his normal quippy tone, but it came out sounding something like a whine.  

John’s lips curled into a smile as he worked his way back up to Sherlock’s mouth, kissing him so deeply that he forgot to breathe for several seconds. John leaned back just a tiny bit-- until their eyes were only an inch apart-- and growled, “Then _do_ something about it.”

Sherlock immediately started rucking John’s jumper up his chest, at which John chuckled again. He sat up and pulled it off completely as Sherlock started working open the fly of his jeans. 

Once they were undone, John wasted no time, kicking them off  and moving back up to straddle Sherlock. Sherlock froze, feeling immobilized by the sight John’s body above him, naked now except for his pants.

“Sherlock?” John’s brow furrowed. _He’s worried. He’s asking me if it’s still alright._

Sitting up slightly, Sherlock didn’t break John’s gaze as he ran his hands up John’s thighs, and grazed his fingertips over the bulge in John’s pants. He leaned forward, slowly, tantalizingly, enjoying the sight of John’s widening pupils. 

Sherlock kissed and then tongued over the budding wetness on John’s pants, still looking upward.  

“Jesus Christ,” John gasped. Hooking one finger in the waistband, Sherlock pulled the pants down just enough that he could kiss the top of John’s leaking cock.

John closed his eyes and let his head fall back slightly, carding his hand through Sherlock’s hair like a caress. 

Sherlock pulled his pants down all the way, grabbing John’s cock by its base and stroking up the length once.  He pulled the budding wetness downward, teasing the frenulum with his thumb. 

“Oh god, Sherlock,” John breathed. 

Still in awe that John was allowing him to do this, Sherlock pushed the pants down to John’s knees and enveloped his cock with his mouth. Grasping John’s hips with both hands, he hollowed his cheeks and alternated long pulls with bobs. From above he could hear John letting out little half-moans of pleasure. Sherlock ran his fingertips down the perineum, just barely teasing over John’s hole, but not pushing inward; John wouldn’t be ready for that. He could feel John’s body trembling around him, and his fingertips raked over Sherlock’s skull. 

Releasing John’s cock, Sherlock started kissing beneath it, down to his inner thighs. Growling, John pushed him down, his eyes dark and ravenous. He tongued one of Sherlock’s nipples until it hardened, then moved on to the other as he pushed Sherlock’s pyjamas down. He slid down Sherlock’s body until his head was level with Sherlock’s hips. 

Sherlock watched John hesitate slightly before he kissed a line up Sherlock’s erection and slowly sucked the top. Sherlock let his head fall backward as the hot, wet heat overwhelmed him. John inched his way downward, his tongue flicking against him torturously. 

Realizing he was getting too close, too fast, Sherlock pulled him back up, and their cocks brushed against each other. They both gasped, their eyes mere inches away. John tilted his hips and pushed forward experimentally, his cock sliding all the way up against Sherlock’s.

Sherlock felt his mouth fall open, his eyes wide, and John smiled again. He licked his hand and held both of their erections together, thrusting forward slowly, tantalizingly. 

Sherlock wrapped his legs around John’s hips, and John started thrusting with more vigor. The sensory overload was overwhelming, and Sherlock could feel his whole body starting to shake. 

“John,” he said plaintively, his fingers digging into John’s shoulder blades. He wanted to get closer, he wanted to do anything to become a part of John.

“Shh, it’s ok. I’ve got you,” John whispered. “I’m not letting go.”

_I love you,_ Sherlock wanted to say, but he couldn’t. It was too soon.

Sherlock blinked, only partially aware that a tear was escaping from his eye as he kissed John again. John picked up the pace, and Sherlock slid his hands down to grasp his arse, pulling him forward. John let out small groans of his own, biting Sherlock’s bottom lip.

 “John, I’m going to--” Sherlock panted, trying to warn him. 

“Come for me,” John gasped as Sherlock’s thighs clenched around him and he spurted over both their stomachs. 

John thrusted hard a few more times as he spilled over, collapsing onto Sherlock’s chest. They held each other tightly and rode out the ends of their orgasms.

Before he had even caught his breath entirely, John grabbed Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms and started wiping them both off. As he did, Sherlock watched his face, looking for any sign of regret, or… 

“Stop it,” John said without looking up. He threw the pyjama bottoms on the floor, and pulled Sherlock towards him until his head rested on John’s chest. “Stop worrying.”

He kissed Sherlock’s forehead, settling in next to him. Sherlock sighed, closing his eyes and letting himself bask in the feeling of the warm body nestled against his own. Finally, after a long time, Sherlock’s breathing slowed, and he drifted off. 

 

* * *

Waking from dreams of sunlight dancing off glinting metal and the smell of the desert after it rained, John had a distinct feeling of claustrophobia. It felt like something was wrapped around him on all sides.

He blinked his eyes open, and for a moment his mind couldn’t register why he was staring at a wall that wasn’t his own. Then he remembered. 

Not only was he in Sherlock’s room, in Sherlock’s bed… but they had also shagged last night. The detective was currently plastered against John’s back; his long limbs were wrapped around him, and his nose was tucked somewhere in the back of John’s neck.

_Stop worrying,_ he’d said to Sherlock last night. Even in his post-coital haze, Sherlock had started looking apprehensive. He was obviously worried that John would leave again, but nothing was further from his mind.

Even in his relationship with Mary-- which he now knew was fake, even if it had felt real for him-- he had never felt anything like this before. It was frightening, and it was new, like blinding light when you first step out into the sun after being too long in the darkness. But that didn’t mean he wanted to crawl back into the dark.  

Sherlock shifted behind him, and John found himself grinning. He was grinning idiotically, in fact. Somehow he had left all the pain behind, and he had never even known that could be possible. It was still in the back of his mind and it would never truly go away, but now something else was expanding and filling him like a balloon. He couldn’t quite put a name to it, not yet.

John traced Sherlock’s hand, which was currently around his waist in a vicelike grip. They were both still naked, though John had pulled the duvet up over them both before he had fallen asleep… and he could feel the beginning of an erection behind him, near his arse. 

Sherlock shifted, pressing his lips into the back of John’s neck. 

“Good morning,” John said tentatively, not sure if Sherlock was awake. 

Groaning softly, Sherlock snuggled even closer (if that was possible), rubbing his hand over John’s stomach and exhaling against his neck.

“Not yet,” he grumbled. 

John smiled again, realizing that this was probably the most he had smiled in over a year. He pushed his arse back against Sherlock experimentally. 

Sherlock froze. John could tell that he was awake, and he must have realized that his half-hard cock was currently pressed up against John. 

“Er… John. I’m…" 

John laughed, turning over. “I’m a man too, Sherlock. It happens sometimes. Especially right after I shag someone and then wake up next to them.” He traced the beautiful lips in front of him, watching the still slightly-hooded eyes scrutinize his face.  

“You’re really here,” Sherlock said in wonder. 

“So I am.” John ran his hand around to the small of Sherlock’s back, tucking himself closer. 

Sherlock sighed, drawing a line down John’s spine with his fingertips, and they dozed for a few more minutes. John had never known Sherlock to be the type to do a lie-in, but he seemed to be willing to make an exception.

But not indefinitely. “What do you want to do today?” Sherlock mumbled after a while. 

“Mmmm. I don’t know. Maybe have a good snog, make some tea, and then have another shag. And later I want to take you to dinner… then probably shag again.” Sherlock snorted, and John tipped his head upward so he could kiss him slowly, lazily. John slipped his hand down towards...

From somewhere on the floor Sherlock’s phone rang, and he groaned in mock exasperation. 

“Hold that thought,” Sherlock said, untangling himself from John and getting out of bed. John rested his head on his hand and enjoyed the unhindered view of Sherlock’s arse as he hunted through the clothes on the floor.  

He finally found it, and he rolled his eyes as he saw the caller ID. Pulling on his pyjama bottoms, he answered it.

“Not today, Lestrade. I’m--” he glanced up at John, who was still watching him contentedly. “--busy. Just have Anderson--” he paused again, as Lestrade interrupted him. Sherlock started pacing back and forth, running his hand through his hair as he listened. His eyes lit up slowly, and there was a little flip-flop in John’s stomach at the sight.

_God, Watson, you have it bad._

“Three? Are you sure the pattern… I see,” he said, finally, glancing up at John again. “One moment,” he said, and he muted the phone. “John--” 

“Take the case,” John interrupted.

“But, John--”

“I wish you could see how you look when you’re excited about something. Take it. I’ll come with you,” he said. Smirking at the shocked look on Sherlock’s face, he got out of bed and kissed him briefly before padding into the bathroom to take a shower.  

 

 

* * *

Within an hour they were stepping out of a cab at the crime scene, and Sherlock was trying (unsuccessfully) not to stare at John with something akin to amazement. Within less than twenty-four hours, John had forgiven him, he had been in his bed, and now he was coming with him to a crime scene. Yesterday when Sherlock had awoken, it was the same as it had been for a year: a grey, expansive wasteland of endless days stretching in front of him. Ever since that day in the hospital, he had felt like there was a cavernous emptiness in his chest, but this morning, he had woken up without that constant ache. It was no coincidence.

He shook his head, striding towards the police tape in front of the chic townhouse, where Donovan was staring at them with her mouth hanging open.  

“Morning,” Sherlock said, pulling the police tape up so that John could step under it.

“You’re back,” she said to John, ignoring Sherlock.

“Apparently,” John said, continuing to walk past her. Sherlock smirked, following him.  

Lestrade was talking to a couple of members of the forensics team. He glanced at Sherlock and John and kept talking, but after a second he did a double take. 

Waving the men away, Lestrade strode towards them, first looking surprised, then confused, then… pleased.

“Sherlock. John.” He nodded towards each of them, smiling openly. “Glad to see you both.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, though he inwardly thanked Lestrade a thousand times over for telling him where he was meeting John the night before.  

“I suppose I have you to thank, Greg,” John said, shaking his hand and grinning.  

“Haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.” He leaned closer to John, lowering his voice slightly but not so much that Sherlock couldn’t hear. “He was totally unmanageable without you, you know. Wouldn’t even talk to anyone--” 

“Shall we take a look at the body before it decomposes?” Sherlock said loudly. John tried to hide a laugh behind his hand.  

“This way,” Lestrade said, handing them each gloves. He led them into the house as he outlined the details of the case. “This is the third one in two weeks. All men in their fifties, all well-to-do, married. No signs of break-in or robbery, and their wives found them in the morning, dead in their beds. Tox screens negative. So far, it looks like they all died of a heart attack.”

“No.” Sherlock said quickly as they walked into the master bedroom.

Lestrade paused. “No?” 

“No. They didn’t die of natural causes. Don’t be an idiot.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes good-naturedly, muttering “He’s back” under his breath and moving to the back of the room.

Snapping on his gloves, Sherlock walked around the body in a full circle. “Dr. Watson? Cause of death?” he said, still looking at the body. 

He could see John smile out of the corner of his eye. He walked over to the body and examined the throat before opening the mouth and looking inside.  

Frowning, he smoothed a hand over the torso, looking for wounds of any kind. After a few minutes, he stood back. “I can’t find any sign of foul play. He wasn’t strangled, stabbed, or shot. It’s like Greg said; he just... died. Could it have been a coincidence? Three blokes just had heart attacks?”

“The universe is rarely so lazy.”

“Oh, come off it, Sherlock. Just tell us,” John said, crossing his arms. 

Sherlock scanned the body one more time, nodding. “This man and the two others were all the same age, same general socio-economic status. He’s had his hair trimmed lately, botox, even a pedicure. He had a mistress on the side, a young one.”

Sherlock tilted his head to the side as he leaned over the body, looking between the man’s toes one at a time. “Here it is,” he said, gesturing John over. There was a small puncture mark between the toes on his left foot. 

“Untraceable poison?” John asked.

“No. Air.” 

“Air?” John said incredulously.  

Sherlock nodded. “Someone injected this man with air to create an embolism, which would make it untraceable. I would wager that if we checked the other two bodies, we would find the same thing.” 

“Who did it?” Lestrade asked from behind them.

He snapped his gloves off with finality. “His wife.”

“His wife killed all three men?”  

“No. His wife killed _him_. The other two were also killed by their wives. It has all the hallmarks of a setup. I’m sure they all met somehow-- at a tennis club, perhaps-- bemoaning their husbands’ affairs and the lack of acceptable allowances, and they came up with a plan to do away with them. Each of them injected her husband as he slept, and he died of a heart attack. Upper class boredom. It kills.” 

John stared at him, open-mouthed, then started laughing. Sherlock frowned.  

“That’s bloody fantastic. You’re amazing,” John said, wiping away tears of mirth.

Sherlock tried to keep his mouth from quirking up into a small grin. “Lestrade, would you happen to have some photos of the other crime scenes? I want to… check something.”

“I thought you already solved--”

“Just do it.” 

Lestrade rolled his eyes and left the room. Once he turned the corner Sherlock wasted no time, pushing John against the wall and kissing him deeply.

Making a small noise of surprise, John kissed him back eagerly before pulling back slightly. “Sherlock, we can’t snog here, it’s a crime scene,” John whispered furtively. “Lestrade will be back any second--”

Sherlock took the opportunity to start on his throat, sucking over John’s pulse hard enough to leave a mark.

“We have at least three minutes,” he said. “Do you have any idea how many times I have wanted to do this?” He started to kiss under John’s jaw. 

“H-How many?” John breathed. 

“Every time you ever called me ‘amazing’ or ‘fantastic’ or any other derivative of that.”

“Seriously? That’s… a lot.”

“Quite.” Sherlock kissed him again passionately, grasping John’s arse with both hands.

“Oh, _Jesus_ ,” he heard from the doorway.

Sherlock pulled back immediately. Lestrade was on the threshold, pointedly averting his eyes and trying not to laugh. Sherlock almost thought he heard Lestrade mutter “I fucking knew it,” under his breath.

Releasing John (who had turned a bright shade of red) and straightening himself, Sherlock walked over and grabbed the photographs. He glanced at them for a half-second. “Just as I thought,” he said, handing them back to Lestrade and striding from the room.

“Come along, John. We’re done here,” Sherlock said. His stomach was roiling, but he didn’t let it show on his face. 

“Er, bye, then, Greg,” he heard John say from behind him.

“I’ll ring you for a pint soon, John. We have a lot to catch up on. Took you two long enough!” he heard Lestrade call after them. Sherlock cringed inwardly, but kept walking quickly with John right behind him. 

He didn’t stop until they came to an alleyway, grabbing John by the shoulders and pulling him out of sight. 

“I’m so sorry, John--” he started to say.

 “Well, I suppose we don’t have to worry about deciding when we want to tell everyone,” John interrupted. His face was still a bit red, but he cracked a smile. 

Sherlock released him, pacing back and forth and running his hand through his hair in exasperation. How had he been so _stupid_? He had just barely gotten John back, and now he had ruined it all. “I don’t know what came over me, I… I’m--” 

John closed the gap between them, grasping Sherlock’s face in his hands. “Shhh. Sherlock. Stop. I’m not mad, ok?” 

Sherlock swallowed, covering John’s hands with his. “You… aren’t?” 

John shook his head, laughing. “I mean, they always thought we had been shagging, anyway, right?”  

Sherlock closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly, but John moved a bit closer. “Hey, I mean it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.” 

He kissed Sherlock tenderly, and Sherlock felt his body slowly relax into John’s. At length, John drew back.

“Now, I think it’s about time you took me back for that shag we were talking about,” John said, grinning again, and Sherlock couldn’t help but smile back.

 

* * *

“How do people do this?” Sherlock gasped as he collapsed onto the bed next to John. He threw an arm over his eyes like some kind of swooning Regency heroine, his pale chest heaving.  

“I’m hoping you’re not asking for a technical explanation at this point,” John said, sitting up against the headboard and laughing as he grabbed some water from the bedside table. Sherlock splayed himself over John’s stomach, making a loud “hmph” noise. The late afternoon sunlight was filtering in through the window, which picked up highlights in his dark curls.

“Don’t be coy, John. It doesn’t suit you.” 

John chuckled. “I don’t actually know what you’re talking about.”

Making a noise of exasperation and flipping over so that his head was still resting on John’s torso, Sherlock pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes. 

“How do people go out and do other things, when they can be doing this all the time instead?”

John cocked his head to the side. “You’re not telling me you were a virgin before me, are you?” 

Sherlock snorted, his hands still covering his face. “Don’t be an idiot, John.”

“Okay,” John said slowly. 

“It has never been like _this--_ is it like _this_ for everyone else? Was it like this for you with all those women?”

“Hey,” John said, poking him in the side. “No talk of other sex partners in the bedroom. That’s bad etiquette.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “John.” 

Sighing, John started stroking Sherlock’s hair. “No, Sherlock,” he said softly. “It’s never been like this for me either. Never.” 

“Not even--” Sherlock stopped himself before he said it. “Never mind.” John felt a sharp bite of pain, but it ended quickly, like a cloud passing over the sun. It was a wound that would never truly heal, it seemed, but now… now he had something else to fill it.

“No. Not even with Mary,” John said quietly.  

There was a long silence while Sherlock digested this. John’s stomach growled, deflating the seriousness of the moment. 

Sherlock looked up at him and they both laughed.  

“Dinner?” Sherlock said, still giggling. 

“Starving,” John said, leaning down to kiss him. 

 

 

* * *

Angelo wasted no time seating them in the table at the window, the one they had sat in that first night long ago. _Everything comes full circle_ , John thought as he sat down.

“A bottle of red, whatever you like, Angelo,” Sherlock said, waving away the wine list without even looking at it.  

“Very good, Mr. Holmes,” he said, grinning at the two of them. 

John rested his elbows on the table, watching him walk away. “Remember when--” 

“He thought you were my date? During the serial suicides case?” Sherlock’s mouth slid into a grin.

John ducked his head, smiling to himself. “Yeah.” 

“And now you are.”

“So it seems.” They sat for a while in silence, because they didn’t need to speak. Angelo brought the wine and took their orders, then left again-- still smiling.

“Is he on uppers?” John wondered after he was gone.

Sherlock took a sip of his wine. “No, I think he’s just… happy.” He scrunched his nose, as if the concept irritated him.

John snorted, taking a sip himself. Sherlock watched him intently, not drinking from his own glass. 

John sighed and set down his wine, clasping his hands in front of himself. “Ok. Out with it. What are you worried about now?” 

Sherlock pressed his lips together. “Are you certain about this?” 

“The wine? It’s fine. A bit tangy, but…”

“John.” 

“You might have to be a bit more specific.”

“Being with me.” _Even though I’m a man,_ was the unspoken addendum. 

“Doesn’t it seem like I am?”  

Sherlock paused for a moment. “You always protested when people assumed that we were a couple.” 

John cracked a grin. “Well we weren’t, not then. I didn’t lie when I said I’m not gay, but I never claimed that I was straight, either.” 

“You seem remarkably calm about all of this, considering your vociferous denials in the past, including in this very spot.” Sherlock kept his tone even, but John could tell that he was still anxious. 

“You also told me, in this very spot, and in no uncertain terms, that you weren't interested.” 

Sherlock was turning his fork over in his hand, pointedly avoiding John’s eyes. “Sherlock, look at me.” 

Slowly, Sherlock raised his gaze, biting his lip. 

“I mean it. I don’t give a rat’s arse anymore what other people think. It’s not important. I was miserable, and now I’m happy. I love you, and I want to be with you.” The words slipped out so quickly that John didn’t have time to process them. He inhaled sharply, realizing what he had just done.  

He had told Sherlock that he loved him. _Shit._

Sherlock’s lips were parted slightly, and his face was blank. John cleared his throat and took another sip of wine. “Erm… forget I said that. I’m--” 

“I love you too,” Sherlock said in a rush, almost as if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it. 

John froze, and they watched each other for a long moment. “R-Right then,” he stammered. 

Sherlock smiled, lowering his eyes. His dark eyelashes fanned out over his pale skin beautifully. On a whim, John took his hand, and Sherlock stared at their hands for a moment before he curled his fingers into John’s.  Appearing a bit overwhelmed, he turned his gaze out the window.  In a flash, John was forcibly reminded of how he had gazed out that same window the very first night, so many years ago. So many years wasted. 

“Here you are,” Angelo said, putting down their plates. He grinned again as he saw that they were holding hands.

“Thanks,” John said, not looking away from Sherlock’s face. Sherlock glanced back at him, and it almost looked like he was blinking away tears. 

“Buon appetito,” Angelo said, bowing and starting to walk away. 

“Hey, Angelo,” John called after him. 

“Si?” 

“How about a candle? It’s more romantic,” John said, smiling as Sherlock laughed.  

“Si, certo,” Angelo nodded enthusiastically and scurried away.  

Sherlock and John looked at each other for another moment before they both laughed again. Unable to stop himself, John leaned over the table and kissed Sherlock briefly. 

“Now what?” Sherlock said as John sat back down.

“Hmm. Now, we eat because we need the carbs, and then I take you home for the best shag of our lives.” 

Sherlock’s lips quirked up into a half-grin. “And after that?”

Considering this for a moment as he picked up his fork, John shrugged. “Then, I think I might need you to help me move home. If that’s alright with you.”  

“Home,” Sherlock repeated. He swallowed, ducking his head slightly. 

John reached over and squeezed his hand again, and Sherlock blinked as he met John’s eyes. They sat in silence as the world whizzed by outside, and for a little while John forgot that any time had passed at all. It almost felt like the years had rewound to that first night, to their first case. He had been lost in the terrifyingly loneliness that had defined his life after the army, and the endless bleak expanse of empty days had stretched out in front of him. But that one day, when he had happened to be walking through the park at that exact moment, and Mike had happened to be sitting on that particular bench, fate had dealt him a merciful hand. Now, like then, it felt as though forces beyond their control had taken them from their original paths with unintended consequences. Everything Sherlock had suffered, everything he had suffered, and everything that had split them apart over and over again had faded away, and at last they had found each other again.

 

 

 

 

_Fin_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone who stuck with me through this long fic which was originally just a little one-shot from a prompt. And of course, I would like to thank Kate, my wonderous beta, who is responsible for bringing out more in my writing than you could possibly know.


End file.
